Mercy Health Closing Hospital In El Reno

Mercy has given its El Reno hospital and the city notice they will not continue to operate the facility after May.

Mercy started operating the hospital in 2009. They had at least 12 patients a day. Now, they have that many in a month.

“If the citizens aren’t using a hospital, we don’t need a hospital,” said El Reno Mayor Matt White.

“That’s business for Mercy and we understand that,” he said.

Mercy says they lost $2.9 million dollars last year on inpatient care and experienced a loss of more than $700,000 in the first quarter of this fiscal year.

Mayor White says patients are going to other nearby facilities in Yukon and Oklahoma City.

The hospital was built in 1954 and is in need of renovations. So, Mercy had been working with the city to build a new hospital. But Mercy says the decrease in patients and increase in construction costs, made that no longer economically feasible.

They notified the city they would, instead, put in an outpatient facility.

Mercy says the new facility will offer the following services:

• Family medicine
• Internal medicine
• Imaging services
• Lab services
• Walk-in urgent care
• Urology
• Cardiology
• Orthopedics
• Pain management
• Home health
• Wound care
• Physical therapy
• EMS services
• Virtual medicine

"While inpatient care in rural settings is economically challenging, we remain deeply committed to the El Reno community," said Jim Gebhart, president of Mercy Hospital Oklahoma City and regional strategy officer for Mercy.

Mayor White, however, says they are talking with Mercy and other healthcare systems to ensure emergency services continue.

“We need emergency care, an emergency room, a place to stabilize you and then ambulance service and we feel like we can do that,” said White.

Approximately 100 employees work at the hospital. Mercy says half will remain in the community and Mercy will work with the rest to offer resources or possibly transfer them to open positions at other facilities.