SEARHC and borough consider location for new medical facility
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TweetThe Southeast Alaska Regional Health Consortium (SEARHC) is considering building a new medical facility in Haines.
“I’ve been yakking at the SEARHC board for years, ‘It’s Haines’s turn. Wrangell has a hospital, now it’s our turn,’” said SEARHC board member and Chilkoot Indian Association (CIA) tribal administrator Harriet Brouillette Tuesday. “There’s a very good chance SEARHC will be expanding its facilities. We’re just starting the discussion.”
Brouillette met with Haines Borough officials on Monday to discuss next steps including location for the new facility and a community survey to gauge project interest.
The survey, which will likely go out in the next month, will ask community members what kind of medical facilities Haines needs.
“SEARHC wants to know how the community feels about expanding. They want to be able to say the community backs the project when applying for funding,” Brouillette said. “After the survey, we’ll start talking with engineers. What we really need is a place to put the facility. We want to make sure we put it somewhere where in twenty years we’re not going to say, ‘What were we thinking?’ It needs to accommodate community growth and expansion.”
A potential facility location discussed at Monday’s meeting was the site of the current public safety building.
“If we do a new public safety building, that might be a good spot for the new clinic, especially because (the clinic would be) close to police and ambulance and fire services,” said Mayor Douglas Olerud, who attended the Monday meeting.
At a Haines Borough Assembly Commerce Committee meeting in April where the topic of a new healthcare facility was briefly discussed, Brouillette said communities that successfully lobbied SEARHC for a new facility were ones that offered up land.
Olerud said nothing’s been decided. In order for the public safety building lot to be viable, the borough would need to secure funding for construction of a new building.
“SEARHC has offered to help the borough secure funding for a public safety building,” Brouillette said.
If government land isn’t available, it’s possible an individual might be willing to donate or sell land at a greatly reduced cost for the purpose of building a new medical facility, she said.
Ultimately, SEARHC will need to determine whether the project pencils out before design begins in earnest, but Brouillette said she suspects it will. SEARHC just built a new facility in Wrangell, which has a population similar to the Chilkat Valley’s.
Brouillette said SEARHC tends to operate on a five-year timeline for this kind of project.
