Rural Hospital Provider Assistance Program - Coffeyville Regional Medical Center, Inc. (CRMC) is an independent, non-profit hospital located in Coffeyville, Kansas. We’re the only full-service hospital in Montgomery County and operate rural health clinics in Coffeyville and Independence. CRMC provides a full range of medical services which allows our patients to get the care they need close home. This is significant for people who don’t have transportation or can’t afford to travel for healthcare. We serve counties in Southeast Kansas and Northeast Oklahoma where poverty rates hover near 17%. Coffeyville’s poverty rate is 26%. Without CRMC, patients will go without necessary healthcare. In recent years, we’ve taken significant steps to become a more sustainable source of healthcare. CRMC received its Critical Access Hospital designation in 2024, and we participated in the Rural Hospital Stabilization Program for the past year. Despite these efforts, we remain a small, rural, independent hospital without the financial backing of a larger health system. Years with no profit make it impossible for us to invest in the medical equipment that is essential for infection prevention, quality patient care, and positive operating margins. CRMC treats nearly 70,000 patients in our hospital and clinics each year. While every department provides valuable, life-saving services, the Emergency Department, Medical Oncology/Infusions, Surgical Services, and the Intensive Care Unit provide nearly 30% of our annual operating revenue. Profits made in these departments support the departments that lose money, thus keeping the hospital doors open to serve patients. CRMC will invest funds from the Rural Hospital Provider Assistance Program in vital medical equipment for the departments that serve the most patients and generate the greatest amount of revenue, thus promoting sustainability. CRMC will invest $50,954 of this grant in Surgical Services. We’ll add new technology in form of an InnoWave Unity 20 Irrigator to clean surgical instruments. We’ll also purchase a Scope Buddy Plus and a Dri-Scope Aid Jet-Stream/Drying System, which will wash and dry endoscopes more efficiently. In addition to improving efficiencies, these items will elevate our high infection prevention standards even further. To provide convenience and comfort to our chemotherapy and infusion patients who spend up to six hours at a time in an infusion chair, CRMC will purchase six Alo Clinical Transport Recliners, totaling $50,148. These chairs are part of a larger project which includes relocating the Tatman Cancer Center to create a more sustainable medical campus. With the balance of HRSA’s investment ($279,000), we’ll purchase 20 new Baxter Dynamo Series Stretchers (gurneys). We’ll use these highly advanced beds on wheels for patient transport throughout CRMC. We use them as patient beds in the Emergency Department, and Surgical Services uses them for pre-op and recovery. Nearly every gurney at CRMC needs to be replaced due to rust, chipped paint, cracked plastic, damaged mattresses, or broken wheels. Our project budget also designates $38,050 (10% of total direct costs) for grant administration and reporting. CRMC’s Emergency Department, Surgical Services, Medical Oncology/Infusion and the Intensive Care Unit provide nearly one-third of our revenue each year. These departments help keep our doors open. It is essential we provide up-to-date, high-functioning medical equipment to treat patients in every department, but especially in these high-volume, profitable departments. Inadequate, aging, or failed equipment is an immediate threat to these four departments. Failure to make upgrades now could result in a departmental shutdown, which will result in a total hospital closure due to the loss significant of revenue. A HRSA investment of $418,552 will help keep our doors open and sustain quality rural healthcare for more than 100,000 residents in Southeast Kansas and Northeast Oklahoma.
