Lewiston doctor to fill in as Garfield hospital CEO

Michael Rooney has been tapped to play a limited role at Garfield County Hospital District as the community it serves looks for ways to sustain medical care in one of the most rural areas of Washington.

Rooney will serve as interim CEO and superintendent beginning Monday. He will fill that job - perhaps just for a matter of weeks - until another new hire, Chief Financial Officer Julie Leonard, gets up to speed on what's happening in the district, Rooney said. Rooney served as St. Joseph Regional Medical Center's chief medical officer until staff cuts in September forced him out.

"I'm looking forward to working with the staff, who are so devoted to the community and dedicated to the hospital," Rooney said.

Leonard starts Dec. 18 and said she expects eventually to be moved into the position of CEO as well as CFO. She is relocating to Pomeroy from Tonasket, Wash., where she is CFO at North Valley Hospital. Like the Garfield County Hospital District, North Valley Hospital offers long-term care. But with 250 employees, its operations are significantly larger than the Pomeroy facility, which employs about 50 people.

Making Pomeroy her home will allow her to live in the same town as her husband, who needs to be close enough to Hayden, Idaho, to monitor rentals he manages there, Leonard said.

Consulting work the district's former CEO, Brenda Parnell, is doing will be phased out entirely at an unspecified time after Leonard's arrival, Commissioner Gary Houser said.

The new CFO will be joining the district at a time when it's at a crossroads as it tries to maintain its emergency room, clinic and nursing home.

In November, voters shot down raising the amount of a permanent annual levy from about $200,000 to $485,000. The $200,000 had been supplemented by one-year special levies that recently had been as high as $730,000.

District officials had promised to end requests for special levies if voters approved a raise in the permanent levy. Being able to rely on the larger amount of cash each year was promoted as a solution to a variety of issues.

Backers of the higher permanent levy believed that physicians, nurse practitioners and physician assistants would be more likely to take positions with the district and stay if they had assurances the money for their jobs wasn't hanging on an annual vote.

With the rejection of that option, the district is examining cooperation with other regional hospitals such as St. Joe's in Lewiston, Tri-State Memorial Hospital in Clarkston and Dayton General Hospital.

"We're trying to make changes and there's going to have to be some cost cutting," Houser said. "There's no magic bullet by bringing (Leonard) in."

Plenty of approaches exist to put the district back on course, Leonard said, but it wouldn't be fair to share details until the board reviews them.

Only one choice is off limits, Leonard said.

"There's no intention of ever selling. That is not on the table."

The issues that Pomeroy is facing maintaining health care are no different than those in other small towns, Houser said.

"We're having our struggle. I hope years from now people will look back and say we did OK."

---

Williams may be contacted at ewilliam@lmtribune.com or (208) 848-2261.