Hospital expansion seeks booster shot

To give or not to give, that is the question.

At its July 19 meeting, the Custer City Council will give thumbs up or thumbs down to a new proposal from Custer Community Health Services (CCHS), Inc., that would see the City of Custer obligated to give CCHS $300,000 a year for 20 years to help pay for a $4 million expansion project of the Custer Clinic and Custer Regional Hospital  (CRH) Emergency Room area.

At the center of the debate is whether the city should deny the money and use it to fund other projects in the city—the city had a deficit budget this year and is projected to have another deficit next year — or continue to help fund Regional Health’s presence in Custer. 

Regional officials say without the money, there will be no room for the hospital and clinic to grow, and the quality of healthcare in Custer could start to diminish. The recruitment and retainment of physicians could also suffer. The debate could boil down to whether or not a hospital district is formed to ease the tax burden on the city.