Riverton Medical District started construction on a new community-led hospital on Dec. 12. The locally-based nonprofit spent the last six and a half years getting the project off the ground.
Once complete, the two-story, 71,000-square-foot facility will have an Emergency Department, 24/7 surgery and 13 in-patient beds. Two of those beds will be for labor and delivery.
Corte McGuffey is the nonprofit’s board chair and said their mission is to “ restore” hospital services to Riverton and the surrounding communities.
“ Our number one goal is to get control of our healthcare again,” he said.
McGuffey said the project is a response to consolidations and reductions in services by SageWest HealthCare, a for-profit company that currently runs hospitals in Lander and Riverton.
“It worked well for a little bit when different companies owned the two facilities, but we've seen what will happen when somebody has a monopoly over healthcare,” he said.
In 2016, SageWest consolidated and reduced its health care offerings at the Riverton location. In that process, it closed the Riverton labor and delivery unit, making the SageWest hospital in Lander the only place to give birth in Fremont County.
“We haven't had a baby here in Riverton for, I think, about eight years now,” said McGuffey.
SageWest has also been criticized for its safety standards in recent years, according to reporting from WyoFile.
Riverton Medical District started partnering on the new hospital project with Billings Clinic, a Montana-based non-profit, about four years ago. McGuffey said he was initially “hesitant” about the partnership, but now calls it “the best of both worlds.”
“ We get to keep our local governance and ownership, but then also get the backing of a great healthcare provider that has resources that we just don't have, as far as recruiting docs and nurses and providing that operational expertise that we don't have,” he said.
McGuffey said patients who need more intensive cardiological or neurological care that can’t be provided more locally will be able to receive that care through Billings Clinic.
“We just want to be a bread and butter community hospital where, if you need your appendix out or you have a broken arm, you can go get it taken care of and you don't have to be put on a helicopter,” he said.
The board chair said the project wouldn’t be on its way to becoming a reality without support from the surrounding communities. The nonprofit also received a $37 million low-interest loan from the U.S. Department of Agriculture Rural Development program in 2022.
Construction on the hospital is set to finish in late 2026.
