NATCHEZ — If Riverland Medical Center builds a new hospital facility, it will be within the Ferriday ZIP code if not the city limits, but wherever it is built, a new facility will attract more patients.

That was the essence of the message RMC board members took to a standing-room only meeting of the Concordia Parish Police Jury Monday night.

“When we had people rate the hospital, it got good marks except in two areas,” RMC Board Member Al Ater said. “They don’t think we’re modern, and they think that we have an old, run-down facility — and I’ll be honest before God and you, we do have an old, run-down facility.

“You look at an old car, and you assume it doesn’t have satellite radio.”

Brian Haapala with Stroudwater Associates — the consulting firm the hospital hired to conduct a feasibility study for a new facility — said the 52-year-old hospital was built for a different time, when even relatively minor procedures could warrant a three-to-five day stay.

“Today, people get their hips replaced and leave the next day,” he said, telling the jurors that a new facility would have in-patient services but would be geared to outpatient care.

Studies have shown that building a new facility can increase patient volumes and improve staffing and recruitment, leading to an overall improvement in health care, Haapala said.

“People see the improvement and want to give it a chance,” he said.

Michael Taylor, a consultant helping the hospital with navigating the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Community Facilities Program, said the financing for the new facility could be done with a 90-percent direct loan through the USDA and a 10-percent guaranteed loan through a local bank.

The USDA program allows for 40-year financing, something the private market doesn’t allow, Taylor said, and can be funded through a revenue bond backed by the hospital’s earnings.

“It is a liability only of the hospital service district, not of the parish as a whole,” he said.

While the loan money is available during the current year’s funding cycle, no one knows if it will continue to be available in the future, Taylor said.

“Right now, they have about a half-billion dollars they are willing to loan,” he said.

Haapala said that with the construction of a new facility, the hospital would be projected to have an operating loss of $503,000 the first year, a loss of $384,000 the second year and a $34,000 net gain the third year, though “those numbers are needing to be studied more.”

The parish can choose to do nothing, Ater said, but, “I suggest y’all ride up to Newellton and see the alternative — Tensas Memorial, they sat there and did nothing right up to the day it closed.”

Approximately 44 percent of Concordia Parish residents used Riverland in some capacity in the last year, Ater said, and while 20 percent of parish residents used Natchez hospitals, the Ferriday-based hospital “lost more people to Alexandria.”

Sixty-six percent of those in Ferriday who were asked said they didn’t mind if the hospital was built outside the city limits, Ater said, but 85 percent of those polled across the parish said they want a new hospital.

But because of regulations overseeing critical access hospital funding — which allows hospitals that serve underserved and rural populations higher reimbursement rates from federal programs — the furthest east the hospital could be located before breaking into the Natchez market would be Crestview Drive at Ridgecrest, Ater said.

Ferriday Alderman Johnnie Brown objected to the idea of moving the hospital anywhere outside the Ferriday city limits, saying that, “Ferriday has been misused enough in our parish.

“They take everything we have, and nothing has been said about the poor and the minorities who live there,” he said.

“We need to think about the people who actually use the hospital — consider the needs of the people who use the hospital.”

Ater said no site has been chosen for a new location yet, though the hospital board has appointed a committee to review potential locations.

“Some of the sites being considered are closer to where Mr. Brown’s constituents are now,” he said. “We know the importance of availability. It is about as far from the folks who use it now as it can be.”

And while the needs of Ferriday are being taken into consideration, Ater said, “This is not Ferriday’s hospital. It is Concordia Parish’s hospital.”

Ferriday mayor-elect Sherrie Jacobs was also present at the meeting, and said she would prefer that the hospital stay within the city limits.

The hospital board members present emphasized that the meeting Monday was just to keep the police jury up-to-date with what was going on, but no final plans have been made for a location or even a hospital design.

Ater said that even if everything was agreed upon Monday it would still be two years before anything likely happened.