State officials are considering the possibility of using CARES Act funds to build a proposed community hospital in Riverton, according to information that emerged at a Legislative Joint Appropriations Committee meeting last week.

“To build a fully functional hospital, which we don’t have now, and which I really think we need to have, is important to the community,” state Sen. Eli Bebout, R-Riverton, said to the committee he chairs.

The $1.25 billion CARES package now being parceled by the Wyoming Legislature is federal money earmarked to relieve citizens and governments of coronavirus-related expenditures.

After months of consideration, Bebout is presenting a plan to direct CARES money not toward pandemic-accommodative expansion of Riverton’s current hospital, SageWest Health Care, but toward a new hospital owned by the City of Riverton.

“There are several points [of the construction effort] that could be COVID-related,” he said.

Current estimates for the hospital construction and land anticipate that effort to cost up to $40 million. The ratio of that amount eligible for CARES funding is still unknown, but will be explored in a working group of apppropriations committee members in the coming days.

For portions of the funding not necessarily COVID-related, Bebout asked Riverton Medical District leader Corte McGuffey whether the city was willing to apply for funds to back the construction effort.

“Yes. We’re working with the city of Riverton right now,” said McGuffey. “The city council and mayor are on board with what we’re doing, and will take ownership of the hospital and the land [using the grant money] — and I think that’s a pretty big commitment on their behalf.”

McGuffey clarified in a later interview that the city has not yet completed a memorandum of understanding with the Riverton Medical District but the topic is imminent in upcoming council meetings; Riverton Medical District is the non-profit entity formed to coordinate hospital planning that began in 2018.

McGuffey added that a U.S. Department of Agriculture program would be used to finance some costs.

“Our town is behind this,” he said. “They know how important this is. They know how much the service levels have dropped here.”

The Joint Appropriations Committee co-chairman, State Rep. Bob Nicholas, R-Cheyenne, asked McGuffey if a new hospital would supplant workers and underwhelm the industry.

“How many people does [SageWest] employ? How many doctors does it have on staff? What services do they not provide? What gap is this going to fill?” he asked. “You’re going to have two competing hospitals in one town. How do you deal with those issues?”

“That’s what a lot of people around the state think: that we do have a hospital here,” answered McGuffey. “But we don’t have a hospital here,”he said, referring to the cutback in services at SageWest Riverton.

He spoke of SageWest’s decision, six years ago, to consolidate many of its services into the Lander SageWest Health Care.

“Before 2014 we had over 230 employees at our hospital, and now we have under 40,” he said. “We used to have 25 doctors, and now we have under 10. The hospital here has decided not to compete. And that’s why we’ve come together to build this hospital.”

McGuffey would later note that although the new hospital expects to be the first truly pandemic-ready hospital in the state and offer services missing from the area, it will be smaller than the current facility.

SageWest Riverton, he said, has about 70 beds. The new hospital would have about 20.

State Sen. Dave Kinskey, R-Sheridan, said the permissibility of building a new hospital with federal funds should be explored carefully.