ROBERT PIERCE
• Leader & Times
In the 1946 general election, the residents of Stevens County voted for bonds of $150,000 for a county hospital, and a later special election took place, allowing $50,000 in additional funding to be approved by voters.
In 1948, $50,000 more was allocated to fund equipment and furnishings, and as time went on, community members rallied with fundraisers to continue to raise money for more necessary equipment.
The doors of Stevens County Hospital (SCH) officially opened in 1950, and recently, hospital workers and Hugoton community members celebrated the facility’s 75th anniversary with a block party.
“We had food, tons of kids games, bouncy houses, different giveaways, face painting, a photo booth,” SCH CEO Jennifer Featherston said. “It was a small carnival. It was a lot of fun. We had a great turnout.”
Planning for the celebration had been in the works for some time, and Featherston said the event was bigger than anyone thought it would be.
“KSN was doing their road trip through that day our town, so more people were out and about,” she said. “We had a huge turnout.”
In its 75 years, Featherston said SCH has been through its share of changes.
“We’ve done everything, including giving birth, which we don’t do anymore, but a lot of elderly Stevens County people were born in this hospital,” she said. “We’ve had several different providers come and go through the years. We’ve definitely had a wide range of people who built it to what it is today.”
SCH has likewise added a rural health clinic with three providers, as well as inpatient and outpatient services at the hospital itself. In 2001, the hospital became a Critical Access Hospital, a designation created by Congress in 1997 to provide support for small rural hospitals.
SCH also has 25 beds and a small surgical department that performs simpler procedures such as scopes and a round-the-clock emergency room.
“We have a specialty clinic that sees different specialty doctors, pediatrists, cardiology, behavioral services,” Featherston said. “We have a retail pharmacy. We have an outpatient and inpatient therapy department, and we also have our 77-bed nursing home.”
In 2000, a groundbreaking ceremony for Project 2000 took place, and this initiated $4 million in renovation, and the state-of-the-art rural health clinic was the cornerstone of the project.
Mechanical electrical facilities were also updated, and new rooms for patients were created. Several departments were renovated or relocated and built anew entirely. This gave patients and visitors more comfort and better access to the hospital’s services.
Featherston said SCH is always striving to get more specialty physicians who can come to Hugoton at least once a month to lessen the travel needs of patients.
“Right now, we’re doing telehealth with cardiology,” she said. “We will be getting an actual cardiologist who’s coming in a few months who’ll come once a month from Garden City. We always want to expand on those. It’s just so hard for people to travel.”
Featherston said specialty services are hard to get in communities such as Hugoton.
“If you have to go to an ear, nose and throat or an otolaryngologist, they’re just nowhere around here anymore,” she said. “Even Liberal struggles with specialists. That’s definitely our need – to have more specialized providers who would visit.”
Stevens County’s population has a large section of elderly, and many of them cannot go as much as five hours for a doctor’s appointment.
“We’re very blessed that we do have a full in-house lab,” Featherston said. “A lot of our testing is done in house. That helps, and with our X-ray department, we can do regular X-rays and CTs. We have mobile X-ray that comes for MRIs and ultrasounds. We try to do as many specialty services we can do so people don’t have to travel to get them, but that’s always the biggest struggle. With that comes a higher cost.”
With a devoted staff and amazing community, Featherston said SCH continues to flourish.
“We have such a tight knit community,” she said. “We have so much support from our county commissioners and the rest of the businesses here. We are fortunate they support us and try to do all the services they can here with us. As long as we have our community, we can try to stay as busy as we can. It’s definitely our community, and our smaller surrounding communities very much support us.”
So what is in store for the next 75 years at Stevens County Hospital? Featherston said a few factors will play a part in that result.
“Health care has changed drastically in the last 75 years,” she said. “I’m not going to say it’s easier or harder. It’s just different. You definitely have to stretch your resources and try to do the best you can with every tiny little service. It was a struggle 75 years ago too. We have a great team that cares about what we do, and they try to do things that are the most cost effective and with quality as we can. It’s definitely the people who work here who keep it going.”
