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projects and that Pro Team is trying to include Kenneth Hall and make it part of a bond offering. No other projects have
yet been identified.
Kenneth Hall is owned by Southern Illinois Healthcare Foundation which purchased it in early 2004 from Ancilla Systems.
Ronda Sauget, spokeswoman for SIHF, says the foundation received a letter in October 2007 from Pro Team Management
concerning the purchase of the hospital but has never spoken to anyone affiliated with the organization.
"In October of 2007 we received a letter on homemade letterhead from something called Pro Team Management," Sauget said.
"They indicated an interest in purchasing the hospital. We sent a letter back on Oct. 29th requesting legal documents,
financial statements, names and addresses of the board of directors, credit references, common things that you would ask
for. On Jan. 21st of 2008, we received a letter from a Mark Scroggins indicating that they didn't have those items to
provide us. It said that the Pro Team was not a legal entity at that time. We sent a note back to Mr. Scroggins indicating
that we received letters in the past; that we have asked for information, legal documents, and financial statements…and if
we didn't receive them by February 2008, that we would conclude that this was not a viable party," she added.
At this point, says Sauget, SIHF has still not received any of the requested documents from Pro Team Management.
SIHF, a community-based, nonprofit healthcare provider, operates the Touchette Regional Hospital in Centreville just five
miles from Kenneth Hall - along with about 30 medical clinics across Southern Illinois. It has plans to build a new hospital
on Interstate 255 at Mousette Lane.
The foundation has applied to the Illinois Health Facilities Planning Board to merge the Certificates of Need of
Touchette and Hall into one. According to Sauget, SIHF is proposing to integrate services in and among the two hospitals to
eliminate duplication.
Kenneth Hall would have inpatient and outpatient behavioral health services, an emergency department and the Windsor
building - which is a building of about 25,000 square feet that houses primary care physician services.
Touchette Regional would focus on acute care services, obstetrics, and surgery and would have an emergency department and
trauma care.
So far, the Health Facilities Planning Board has met on the request three times with no action. It is scheduled to meet
again concerning SIHF's request on April 8.
"We've been very up front with everybody in stating that what we have are basically two freestanding hospitals that
provide the same services to a large degree that are not financially sustainable moving forward," said McManus, chief
operating officer of both hospitals. "If we keep things the way they are, it will jeopardize both hospitals."
Robert Klutts, chief operating officer of SIHF, says the foundation never promised anyone that it would keep Kenneth Hall
open and functioning as a full-service hospital. He said the foundation got involved in Kenneth Hall (at that time it was
St. Mary's Hospital) on the request of then East St. Louis Mayor Carl Officer. Klutts says he was called to a meeting with
the mayor and the CEO of St. Mary's Hospital in October 2003. The subject: Ancilla Systems, owners and operators of St.
Mary's, was going to shut the hospital down within 60 days. Officer wanted to know if there was anything Klutts could do.
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Klutts took the mayor's request back to his board. Despite the fact that Ancilla had lost about $30 million at St. Mary's
over the previous five years and the fact that it duplicated services that were provided at Touchette, SIHF agreed to take
it on, try to keep it operating and look to merge it with Touchette when it built the new facility.
Klutts says that since then, SIHF has renamed the hospital Kenneth Hall Regional Hospital and the foundation has been
able to cut the losses in half - but it's still losing nearly $3 million a year and SIHF doesn't know what else to do to
reduce the bleeding.
"So after about a year of just trying to get a hold of this situation and stabilize Kenneth Hall," Klutts said, "we went
into what we called a 'bridge strategy:' How do we survive until we get the new hospital? Well, you don't duplicate
services. You maximize efficiencies, and those kinds of issues. You try to do the best you can with the resources that you
have. We cut the losses from what was $6 million a year down to about $2.5 to $3 million a year at Kenneth Hall. The reality
was, that was about as good as we could get it. You're not going to get it any better there because it's a 100-year-old
facility. It's huge. It's not efficient, if you can imagine a 100-year-old anything."
After five years and with the new hospital not yet in sight, SIHF decided it couldn't continue to lose money and had to
consolidate services. According McManus, the two facilities serve an identical territory. Eighty percent of their patients
come from the communities of Alorton, Cahokia, Centreville, East St. Louis and Washington Park.
Once SIHF came to the conclusion that the two hospitals needed to be merged, McManus said, it looked at the pros and cons
of each facility and location. SIHF concluded that Kenneth Hall was 50 years older; it was on the edge of the population;
and it would cost about $11 million to retrofit, compared to $4.5 million for Touchette Regional. The decision was clear.
East St. Louis Mayor Alvin Parks has been leading the charge to try to stop the merger of the hospitals.
"We have no problem with them wanting to build a new facility near Sauget," said Parks. "That's just fine. We have no
real problem with that, but you can't do that with this community's Certificate of Need. That would leave us without a
hospital in East St. Louis and leave many of our people with very limited possibilities of getting to a hospital in the
event of a national emergency. And it would certainly inconvenience those who may not have an emergency but still need
hospital treatment of having to go to unincorporated St. Clair County. We find that to be totally unacceptable,
irresponsible and morally unacceptable," he added.
Parks says he has not been able to get SIHF to meet with Pro Team Management. He said Pro Team made an offer to SIHF to
purchase the hospital on Oct. 23, 2007 and multiple requests have been made to arrange a meeting, but SIHF has not been
willing. Parks said it's clear that the foundation is no longer willing to operate Kenneth Hall as a full-service hospital,
but that a full-service hospital is needed in the community. He said he believes that Pro Team Management is a viable buyer
and that SIHF should be willing to step aside.
"We thank them (SIHF) for whatever the years of service have been, and thank them for keeping it open for as long as they
have," said Parks. "We have basically come to the conclusion that they don't feel they can make a profitable situation out
of the hospital. We're not asking them any longer to stay in an unprofitable situation. We're simply saying to them, 'There
is another buyer for the hospital. Allow them to operate it.'"
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