Hospital District sells EACC facility
Last updated 7/19/2018 at Noon
The big news of the month, which you probably already have heard, is that the District has succeeded in selling the former Care Center property.
What you may not have heard is that it looks as if the deal will be even better than originally thought. That is because the Care Center property actually comprises four distinct land parcels.
The buyer’s original offer, as accepted by the District, was for one of those four parcels, the one with the facility structure on it.
But the buyer, considering their plans for further expansion in the middle future, now wants to also purchase two of the remaining three parcels, and is currently in the process of getting appraisals of the market value.
While the District is currently storing archived records on one of those two parcels, the buyer has volunteered to offer a lease-back to the District at low cost, so that the District can take its time relocating the storage.
This will make the proceeds of the sale higher than the original price, which is excellent news.
The buyer’s immediate plans are for a dementia-care facility, something sorely needed in this region. While initial community feedback is so far limited, what there is suggests that a lot of area families will be very pleased to soon be able to have loved ones close by for visiting purposes.
The buyer’s middle-term expansion plans would be for a senior citizen assisted living facility, another regionally under-served need.
Not least of the merits of the buyer’s plans is jobs: it is estimated that the first phase alone will likely bring over two dozen jobs to the community; and new jobs tend to have a ripple effect, creating yet other jobs.
On another front, at the Chelan conference I referred to last month, the WRHAP Group, of which your District is a member, had some preliminary conversations with key state legislators concerning the Health Care Authority’s plans for new payment methods for Medicare, which might set the pattern for other payers as well.
I would characterize those conversations as suggesting that the Group has a massive educational project on its hands: the legislators seemed to me, and not a few others, regrettably misinformed on a number of important issues, especially concerning small, rural facilities.
The Group plans a meeting in Olympia with the full legislative Joint Committee sometime in the near future, at which it is to be hoped we can get our points across with supporting data.
Finally, on a completely different matter, I would like to let everyone know that the District is assembling a cookbook of local recipes, the book to be available starting at the September Health Fair.
We would thus love to hear from anyone who has a local recipe or two to contribute; the one requirement is that the recipe be original, not from a cookbook, but that includes handed-down family recipes.
If you would like to contribute, just call our main number and say you have a recipe for the upcoming cookbook.
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