Opinion: What I’ve learned since joining the hospital board
Published 1:30 am Thursday, May 14, 2026
I joined the South Peninsula Hospital operating board four and a half years ago. Here are six big things I have learned.
Independent Critical Access hospitals are a dying breed.
I had no idea just how volatile the national climate has been for Critical Access Hospitals like ours. A Critical Access Hospital is a Center for Medicaid & Medicare Services designation given to hospitals that are located in rural areas more than 35 miles from the next nearest hospital, provide 24-hour emergency services, and have no more than 25 inpatient beds with inpatient stays averaging less than 96 hours. Up until the pandemic, CAHs were closing at a rate of about 10 per year over 20 years. Some were bought out by system hospitals, some were reduced to emergency services only, and some closed their doors permanently. We are one of three remaining CAHs in Alaska.
South Peninsula Hospital is growing stronger and healthier.
So why is South Peninsula Hospital growing stronger and healthier while other similar hospitals are not? This is a question I posed to national consultants. Their answer: leadership and community partnership. For SPH to continue the upward trend of growth and improvement we need good administrative leadership, good doctors providing quality services, a functional board, and strong relationships with both our community partners and our borough leadership. We are proactively building all of these to become the strongest we have ever been.
Hospitals rely on capital partners. The borough wants to continue as ours.
After the proposed capital funding bond was voted down, we took stock and asked the question, “Do the taxpayers of the Southern Kenai Peninsula Service Area and our borough leadership want to continue as the capital partners of SPH?” Inability to access capital is a primary driver of CAH closures nationwide. In our case, the answer was yes, KPB and the majority of our taxpayers want to continue to support the hospital. However, our voters want to see a better plan and want us to better communicate that plan. We took that to heart. You will be hearing more from us and we want to hear from you.
Cost of care is a national issue. Affordability is a local one.
Why is healthcare so expensive? There is no question that weighs on me more and yet the answers are deeply unsatisfying. It feels similar to asking “Why are homes in Homer so expensive?” There are incredibly powerful national trends, policies, stakeholders, oversight bodies, profiteers, political forces, and legal realities that all work together to drive up the cost of healthcare. We didn’t make the system, but we exist in it. Within that system, we are committed to providing excellent care by hiring excellent providers and staff.
But that doesn’t help the person who has been impacted by an unexpected medical bill. In response to the rising cost of healthcare, we are focused on addressing affordability in our local context. This effort is further complicated by federal rules limiting discount pricing and the way hospitals talk about discount pricing. I know, it’s crazy.
This is how we are responding now: First, SPH increased the charity care limit to 3.5 times the federal poverty limit. This means more families qualify for additional cost-reductions. Second, we are opening a drop-in urgent care clinic to save families the cost of having to go to the ER. Third, we are going to be more proactive in helping our community understand healthcare cost and payment structures for Medicaid, Medicare, co-pays, self-pay, deductibles and the like. Stay tuned for more details on upcoming educational workshops.
It wasn’t until I joined the board that I understood that SPH offers some of its services at a loss. The way we pay for those services is by offsetting those losses with other services that operate in the black. When you choose to have your out-patient surgery in Homer, a portion of that revenue enables SPH to offer a wide range of medical services that are discontinued when Critical Access Hospitals are bought out by larger systems.
Our consolidation challenges are not going away.
In the second quarter of fiscal year 2026, our inpatient service surveys gave SPH a near perfect score, ranking us in the 99th percentile of comparable hospitals. I love to see that. At the same time, our outpatient service surveys gave us a satisfaction average of 94%. Unfortunately, that places us in the 27th percentile. 73% of similar hospitals are doing better than our 94% score.
There are some contributors to this problem that we’re fixing as we speak. But there is a larger issue that continues to present big challenges: consolidation and continuity of care. No one wants to go to four locations in four hours to get their healthcare services, or to show up to a full parking lot and then find out you’re at the wrong building.
Our consolidation challenges are not going away. SPH needs physical space to grow and we are working to solve our challenge in a way that doesn’t alienate our community. On this front, we expect intense scrutiny and strong opinions, yet remain committed to solving for all of us.
I enjoy my role immensely.
I was born here, into the arms of the legendary Dr. Eneboe way back in 1979. My parents live here and I have married children living here. I love this town. I applied for a board role in response to a personal invitation.
Since that time I have had the privilege of getting to know a new group of people bonded by our shared commitment to serve our community through excellence in governance.
We all come to the equation with different convictions and concerns. We all come to the table committed to applying our Alaskan grit to the task at hand. It is because of the caliber of this group that I can say with confidence, I look forward to a strong future for SPH and for healthcare in Homer.
May 10-16 is National Hospitals Week! Thank you to all those who make SPH a great place for care!
Aaron Weisser is the president of the South Peninsula Hospital Operating Board.
