Senator Roy Blunt Visits Grant City Medical Clinic

Missouri Senator Roy Blunt visited the Grant City Medical Clinic Saturday and heard about how the clinic is already making an impact on the community. “We’ve saved a lot of lives through the capabilities we have here,” Northwest Medical Center CEO Jon Doolittle told the Senator. The clinic is able to offer more services at the old Casey’s building in Grant City, located next to the Baptist Church and the drive-in. They are now a five day a week clinic, with a doctor on hand two days, and a nurse practitioner on hand the other three days. They have an X-ray on site, which means fewer trips to Albany for patients. They take patients of all ages and all types, without regard for one’s ability to pay.

Nurse Sharon Supinger said that there were about 30% more patients at the facility, and the fact that they don’t have to frequently make trips to Albany or elsewhere, a drive of 25 minutes or more, can mean the difference between saving a life. Patients are coming from as far away as 40 miles north into Iowa, Maryville, King City, and Bethany.

For over 60 years, Northwest Medical Center in Albany was known as Gentry County Memorial Hospital until it was taken over by Mosaic in 2014. This year, Mosaic also bought up St. Francis Hospital in Maryville as well. The partnership was instrumental in the clinic expanding its services; for instance, the X-ray was from another Mosaic facility. They have a system of 500 beds.

Mosaic also partners with Sherri’s Pharmacy, which is frequently able to find medications for people at 10% the cost of what they would pay elsewhere.

The pull factor is important for a county of Worth County’s size. While Worth and Nodaway Counties are holding their own, the Bethany Republican-Clipper reported in its May 1st issue that population was declining in other places. Harrison County is down 6.1% since the 2010 census, which is steeper than the other counties in the area.

There are signs that Worth County is arresting the long-term decline in population. Commissioner Reggie Nonneman, who was at the gathering, said that Worth County was signing up for three times as many new 911 addresses as Gentry County is and that 20 new homes had been built between Grant City and Allendale just in recent years. He said the biggest drawback the county has is the lack of employers with more than two employees.

One way to move forward that Senator Blunt and State Representative Andrews have been working on is broadband. Two weeks ago, Senator Blunt came to Jefferson City and addressed the legislature about the need to move forward with broadband. “Access is just as important as telephone access was 50 years ago,” said Senator Blunt. He noted that nearly every county in the area, with the exception of a few near the Missouri River, has declined in population since 1930. He said that with the economy showing continued signs of strength, such as the 3.6% unemployment rate and 3% growth rate, wages were finally going up and there was a big opportunity to refocus on small communities.

Senator Blunt said that he had learned about the new facility in Grant City during a visit to Northwest Medical Center in January and wanted to learn more about it. He said that one of the biggest hindrances to hospitals was the Affordable Care Act, which he said wrongly assumed that everyone would have the ability to pay, which didn’t happen. That led to a lot of unpaid bills thanks to the high deductibles in the current ACA plans. “We’ve had to work hard to ensure that critical access hospitals are still available,” said Blunt. He said he wanted to invest in behavioral health, funding for health research, and personalized healthcare, which he said has already helped a lot with cancer treatment. “The biggest thing the feds need to understand is the value of critical access,” said Senator Blunt.