The new owner of Keokuk’s hospital is planning to reopen and bring back 24-hour emergency care by year’s end.
Flint, Michigan-based healthcare provider Insight agreed to purchase the building at 1600 Morgan St. in January 2023, after previous owner Blessing Health closed it three months earlier. Blessing Health had purchased the property in March 2021.
Dayne Walling, Insight Director of Public Policy and Government Relations, said the former 49-bed hospital building will have eight-to-ten emergency rooms.
The hospital will be staffed with an emergency physician and include support services with an imaging laboratory and a pharmacy.
“The staffing size is still being determined, but it will be substantially smaller than when the hospital was a full-service general hospital with inpatient care,” Walling said.
The hospital’s reopening was made possible due to new state legislation. In March, Iowa lawmakers approved the licensing rules for rural emergency hospitals to operate across the Hawkeye State.
The new provision permits hospitals in rural areas and smaller towns to opt out of providing inpatient care while continuing to operate an emergency room.
The new law is in response to the 140 rural-area hospitals across the country that have been forced to close in the past decade, leaving communities without emergency medical services.
Walling said Insight’s Keokuk hospital might be the first facility in Iowa designated as a rural emergency hospital.
“It's a different model,” he said. “It will start small, but the care will be very high quality. It will offer the life-saving treatments that people need in an emergency situation, and then we'll be growing from that base in coming years so that we can offer more to the community.”
He said Insight believes the model can be financially sustainable.
There will not be any noticeable changes to the brick building’s exterior. Walling said most of the changes will occur indoors, as Burlington, Iowa-based contractor Carl A. Nelson & Co. will renovate the building’s interior this summer and fall.
“Insight is excited to offer all the hospital services to the community again,” Walling said. “And we look forward to growing our presence in the coming years with the community support.”
He also said the healthcare provider spent $825,000 last year to secure and maintain the hospital campus and provide patients records kept within the shuttered building.
“We know the community is anxious to see the work get done at the hospital and to get the doors reopened,” he said.
Insight has surgical centers located throughout Michigan, a hospital in Warren, Michigan and a 400-bed acute care hospital on the south side of Chicago.
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