TOWER — The challenges facing small rural hospitals in the current medical environment are myriad: staffing, finances, regulations, and more. And while the financial piece of this picture is important, Ely-Bloomenson Community Hospital CEO Patti Banks said the hospital’s mission, to take care of their community, is truly their central focus.
“People focus on the cost of health care,” she said during one of four local presentations planned on their latest community survey. “But what makes up those costs should not be forgotten.”
Banks and other hospital officials held in-person meetings in Tower, Babbitt, and Ely last week to discuss the data collected on their 2025 Community Health Needs Assessment.
In Tower, they met with a few interested community members at the Tower Café during an early morning presentation. While attendance in Tower and Babbitt was low, there were still a lot of good questions, Banks said. The Ely sessions hosted over 30 interested residents, she said.
“You can’t put a number on the cost of caring for our community.”
The Ely-Bloomenson Community Hospital is an independent, nonprofit, 21-bed critical access facility run by a board of nine community members.
All nonprofit hospitals are required to complete this assessment every three years, along with communicating the results of the assessment to the local community. While the hospital is only required to do a survey, EBCH uses the opportunity to gather as much data as they can to help the hospital serve its community.
“If we are going to have to do it,” said Banks, “we want to do it right.”
The hospital used an online survey method this year, which did boost responses, as well as the demographic mix of those who completed surveys. They also held focus groups in Ely, Tower, and Babbitt, and one-on-one interviews with identified stakeholders and community leaders.
“Our goal was to get 300 responses,” said Jodi Martin, the marketing and communications team leader for EBCH. “We came very close with 278 usable responses.” Usable responses were surveys that had at least 75 percent of the questions answered.
The last time the survey was done, they mailed out 800 surveys. About 200 were returned as non-deliverable, and they only received 120 surveys back.
“We will use this data to move forward,” said Martin. “It’s a great way to collaborate.”
Martin said the more connections the hospital makes during the survey process, the better the survey is.
“We use the data for strategic planning, for grant writing, policy and advocacy work, and as a pulse check on emerging or hot button issues.”
Martin said survey results have pointed out some smaller issues of which they weren’t aware.
Banks said the data is important to advocacy work they do with both local, state, and national representatives.
“They only know what we have told them,” Banks said. “We need to tell our story, what it is like in rural communities, and what we experience as we try to remain a critical access point for care.”
Survey results
Survey results have shown the three most pressing health concerns in the area are mental health, dental health, and access to specialists. These have not changed in the last nine years the hospital has done the survey.
But one thing that did change this year was what people considered the top three items essential to a healthy community.
“Good jobs and a healthy economy have always been one,” Martin said. “But this year for the first time, access to health care and other services was a top three concern. The third concern was affordable housing.”
The hospital also took the opportunity to ask some additional questions on the survey, focusing on mental health, health education, and EMS and transportation.
“Access to health care is not a right,” noted Banks. “But it is an expectation. Cities and counties do not have to fund access to care. This is why talking about rural health is so important right now.”
“People think it is their right, when they call 911, to get an ambulance,” Martin continued. “But the ambulance or hospital can go away at any time.”
Lack of transportation to the hospital is an issue they are seeing more often, she said. And the availability and financial stability of ambulance services are also ongoing issues, they noted.
“Creating a sustainable solution for transfer needs, including EMS, emergency, and non-emergency transport was not an issue that came up in our survey three years ago,” Martin said.
Martin said the hospital does as much as possible, including working with a private transportation service to fund transportation services for patients who need to travel to other ends of the state for care, mostly mental health services. And once a patient is done receiving in-patient care, they often need help finding a way back home.
The hospital is also facing some new challenges.
Nonprofit hospitals in Minnesota now face new administrative paperwork requirements, including creating action plans to address the top ten areas identified in the community health survey, not just the top three.
The in-person focus groups conducted raised some other questions.
“In St. Louis County, the city of Duluth skews the data,” they noted, leading to some surprising results, such as showing the availability of specialists is higher than the state average.
Focus groups reiterated that financial stability is essential to a healthy community.
“Our young families are struggling,” the focus group reported. “And also many are under-insured or not insured.”
The complete survey and data are available online at www.ebch.org, and people can request a paper copy, if needed.
Cook Hospital
The Cook Hospital also did a Community Health Needs Assessment, working with the same survey company as Ely-Bloomenson. The report and results are similar in many important ways, showing the challenges facing small, rural hospitals are not unique. This survey is also available online at www.cookhospital.org.
But as with Ely, some of the demographic data is not quite accurate, because St. Louis County as a whole, which includes Duluth, skews some of the data.
Upcoming challenges
Upcoming federal funding cuts, part of the One Big Beautiful Bill passed earlier this year, will affect the hospital in ways not yet understood, Banks said.
The hospital is also working on planning for upcoming changes in state law, specifically the new paid leave, and the safe and sick time programs.
Banks said the impacts will be mostly felt on the smaller hospital departments like lab and radiology.
“These departments are small to begin with,” Banks said. “We struggle to find people who want to move to our area that have this training.”
“If we have one employee who has an event, and could possibly be out 20 weeks on leave, this could potentially shut down a department.”
“Right now, this is our biggest concern,” Banks said. “The people doing this hands-on work. It’s challenging to fill those positions.”
Banks said there are options in place for hiring doctors and nurses for temporary positions, but these networks are not in place for lab techs and x-ray techs.
She also noted that the hospital has a stable number of physicians and nurses and also provides on-campus housing for those providing 24/7 emergency care.
The hospital added an on-campus day care last year, and it filled up quickly, serving 14 children.
“But since last April, we’ve had 10 new babies born to our employees,” Martin said.
“We can’t take all those babies, but we do collaborate with Ely Community Resources and other daycare providers to help find child care.”
“We need to be creative and collaborative to keep our staff,” said Banks.
Questions or concerns
Banks said there are many ways community members can help the hospital, including become a member for $100 which gives people a vote for the board of directors. These memberships are open to anyone in areas that the hospital serves. Banks said right now there are some openings on the board for members who live outside of Ely.
The hospital is also looking at different ways of raising money, including philanthropy.
“If we know what the needs are,” Martin said, “when people ask we can tell them how to help.”
Martin said philanthropy is going to need to be a stream of revenue in the future.
They both also said it is important for the public to talk to their local, state, and federal officials about the importance of rural healthcare.
Ely-Bloomenson also have a community liaison committee that meets every other month to hear from hospital officials and provide feedback.
Anyone with questions is welcome to call the hospital at 218-365-3271.