The Montezuma County Hospital District is asking voters to approve a sales and use tax to help pay for a new wing and renovations to Southwest Memorial Hospital. The tax measure will only pay part of the cost; other funding components are included in the plan.
The rationale behind a sales tax is that visitors to the area contribute. That makes sense, because visitors use health services. MCHD has mitigated the primary argument against such a funding mechanism – that sales and use taxes disproportionately burden lower-income consumers – by excluding most grocery items, prescriptions, residential utilities and some farm equipment. The tax increase also is designed to sunset when the project is paid off.
New patient rooms would be constructed to include modern technology and amenities. Better facilities for ambulances and emergency crews would be added, and other hospital departments would be relocated and upgraded. Southwest Health System clinics currently dispersed throughout the community would be consolidated at the hospital location.
Those are valuable improvements, well worth four cents on a $10 purchase.
Approval of this ballot issue does not create a blank check, and it should not. This year, when a whole slate of presidential candidates is talking about taxes, the voters will want assurances that their money will be spent wisely and frugally. Many are willing to pay for modern health care facilities – and more should be. They want professionals to have attractive, functional work space. They are not so willing to pay for soaring foyers and other architectural frills.
Mostly, though, they want effective, affordable health care to be available locally, even if, paradoxically, they seek care elsewhere when they have time to travel. Montezuma County residents want to keep their hospital, and for that to happen, Southwest Memorial needs to be competitive.
Southwest Health System (the private not-for-profit corporation that runs the hospital and clinics) has done a good job of hiring the physicians the community needs. In deciding where to practice, physicians consider the quality of the facilities available to them. That is true for several reasons, not the least of which is that facilities do affect patient outcomes.
They also affect what kind of care can be provided. Now that Cortez once again has physicians who will deliver babies and see pediatric patients, an upgraded birthing center is an amenity the community will appreciate and, we hope, utilize.
Moving clinics to the hospital campus, so that patients can see their personal physician, receive diagnostic services, have physical therapy, and be admitted for inpatient care, all in the same place, is an attractive idea. It benefits not only senior citizens and patients with limited mobility, but parents of young children and people who just are not feeling well.
All in all, this is a well-planned set of improvements, and they deserve the public’s support.
The hospital district (the taxing entity and landlord) and Southwest Health System need to do a better job of promoting the ballot issue. On the other hand, citizens are welcome to seek out information on their own. Either way, the availability of good health care is not the place to scrimp.
Vote “yes” on Ballot Initiative 5A when your ballot arrives in the mail.
