Juneau’s hospital plans to seek subsidies to avoid cutting services

The board for Juneau’s city-owned hospital plans to seek subsidies for services it says are contributing to a financial crisis that could close the hospital within three years. 

Bartlett Regional Hospital’s board is giving itself just a handful of months to convince the city or other entities to subsidize some services that are draining money. If it can’t secure that money by the end of October, or find a third party to take them over, the services will be eliminated. 

Max Mertz, the hospital board’s finance committee chair, explained the seriousness of the situation at a board meeting on Tuesday.

“We’re burning cash and we’ve got to do something to address that,” he said. “It’s urgent — this is not something that we can kick the can down the road on.”

The hospital hasn’t been making enough money to cover its costs since 2019. And since mid-2020, it’s been losing about $1 million a month.

Hospital leaders said that without significant cuts, Bartlett will run out of money within three years. 

On Tuesday night, the hospital’s board unanimously voted to seek subsidies or third-party providers to take over services like the Rainforest Recovery Center, and adult and adolescent crisis services — services it says are losing between $800,000 and $1.2 million annually. It’s that, or else cut them come Oct. 31. 

But Bartlett will keep running home health and hospice services, provided the hospital can come up with a five-year plan for getting the program’s finances back on track. That program was previously under consideration for closure. 

Mertz said the decision didn’t come easy. Though no one gave public testimony at the meeting, the hospital got more than 60 pages of written comments, and dozens more in-person comments at previous public meetings. Most of that was in support of keeping the services alive in some form.

“The public has really weighed in on this and obviously there’s a lot of passion and support around these programs in the community and we’re left with, of course, a very hard decision,” he said.

The plan now heads to the Assembly, which will have to decide if — and how — the city should fund the programs.