BY ANDY GARDNER
North Country This Week

MASSENA -- A town councilor at Monday night’s Massena Memorial Hospital board meeting said he hopes MMH will maintain its current level of service under an affiliation with, or acquisition by, St. Lawrence Health System.

Tom Miller, who is a former Massena Fire Department chief, said that role taught him that major players in the local economy are here because in the event of an accident, they can get their workers quick emergency treatment at MMH.

"When I was fire chief, I took part in an audit with NYPA, a safety audit. And it had direct reflection on MMH,” Miller said at the meeting. "What they looked at was equipment, training, disaster plans and all that. Their concern was ... how quick they can get to a hospital."

He said another concern is in the event they needed other rescue squads for mutual aid, Massena can’t get help from communities to the north because of the international border.

"As fire chief, I was the guy getting the resources, the rescue squads. When we start pulling rescue squads from other communities, there's an issue,” he said. "When you're pulling in mutual aid, you've got to worry about how far they've got to travel. So the service has got to be here at Massena Memorial Hospital."

He also said MMH would be important if there were ever to be an accident involving a train on the CSX line that crosses through the southern portion of town.

"You'd be surprised what's on that rail line,” Miller said.

He also offered the opinion that patients being taken to Canton-Potsdam Hospital instead of Massena would have a negative effect on local rescue squads.

"If we have to transport to Canton-Potsdam, that's taking resources out of this community,” Miller said. "That's going to take that second or third rig out of that barn and keeping it out longer"

MMH is in the process of converting to critical access hospital designation. They’ve received a certificate of need from the state Department of Health, but still have to go through more steps before it’s official.

Miller said he’s concerned that the change could affect the level of services. However, the interim CEO and MMH board chair it’s just a change in their reimbursement structure, not actual day-to-day operations.

"I know services and operation drives finances. When you're thinking about changing services and operation, please keep in mind how important it is,” Miller said.

"I was under the impression, and I'm a board member, that critical access was going to change things here ... that is not at all the truth,” MMH board chair Loretta Perez said. "The idea is it's a different payment plan that's going to give us more money.”

"We can't lose $8 million a year going forward,” MMH interim CEO Pat Facteau said. "We need to do what's best for this hospital and the community.”

Critical access designation will get MMH a higher Medicare reimbursement. It’s based on an average inpatient stay of four days with no more than 25 beds at any given time. Since MMH’s inpatient volumes have dropped over the last several years, they now meet the criteria.