COOK- It would be easy to assume that last June 19, the day a flood swamped Scenic Rivers’ dental clinic here, causing hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage, was Keith Harvey’s worst experience. But you would be wrong.
Harvey, the executive director of Scenic Rivers Health Services, a community health center that serves several rural communities in northern Minnesota, said Tuesday, Jan. 30, was the worst day of his long tenure in medical administration. That was when the Trump administration shut down payments for all federal grants and contracts, cutting off the primary revenue stream for Scenic Rivers and its 11 clinics throughout northeast Minnesota.
“I got notice at a quarter to seven on Tuesday morning, and all of a sudden I can’t access my funds,” Harvey said. “I can tell you that was unnerving. I figured we would be okay for a period of time, but we don’t have any reserves. If we were not able to access those federal funds, which are there to help us with our payroll and other expenses, but primarily payroll, we would have been in a pretty challenged situation. What I would have done I have no idea. My immediate reaction was I’ve got to figure out how to shrink the size of our organization so we can continue to make our payroll and keep operating.”
But with the bulk of the agency’s funds devoted to payroll, Harvey would have had some very hard choices to make, and not just for the short-term care of patients.
“The reality is, should I suspend operations in a clinic, there are people there that can find other jobs, especially on the dental side. I’m fairly certain we’d lose them and not get them back, and so it would become more of a long-term situation.”
But fortunately, for now, the financial spigot was turned back on by the end of that week thanks to a temporary restraining order reversing Trump’s order, at least for Scenic Rivers. A second ruling this Monday castigated the administration for failing to fully comply with the order, with numerous programs reporting that administration officials have yet to restore their funding.
The judge’s ruling is only temporary, pending an upcoming hearing for a permanent injunction against the Trump action. Meanwhile, Scenic Rivers is also taking steps to protect its funding.
Harvey told the Timberjay on Tuesday that the agency is an unnamed partner in a federal lawsuit in Mississippi filed on behalf of multiple organizations, including the National Council of Nonprofits and the American Public Health Association. The judge in that case also ordered a temporary stay of Trump’s order, with a hearing for a permanent injunction scheduled next week.
“I worked with an organization called Democracy Forward,” Harvey said. “My name is not specifically identified in it, but if you were to look at the information that I put in there, a lot of people are going to identify that as us.”
Harvey said a permanent junction would leave current funding in place until the final outcome of the lawsuit is decided, hopefully in the plaintiffs’ favor.
“If that temporary restraining order was lifted and they could freeze those funds, we’d be right back where we started,” Harvey said. “I’ve never been in a more uncertain environment in my life.”
Flood recovery
Harvey certainly didn’t need another financial struggle on his hands, as Scenic Rivers is still struggling to find enough money to restore the dental clinic in Cook.
Flood insurance covered about 90 percent of the cost to repair the damaged floors and walls, but it didn’t cover anything else.
“The biggest things that have hit us hard is the cabinetry and the equipment that was damaged – we had to discard almost all of that, and there’s no funding for that. We probably had $250,000 worth of cabinetry that we had to dispose of. That’s what we’re working on.”
With a $25,000 grant from IRRR and a $120,000 grant from the Delta Dental Foundation, Harvey was able to make enough headway to reopen limited operations.
“That got us up and running with four operatories, that’s chairs, running so we could continue to see patients,” he said. “But we have not been able to replace the other stuff at this point in time. I’ve applied for two Small Business Administration loans, one was to replace equipment, the other to replace the working capital we lost from being closed for two months and having to pay salaries. Both of those were denied because they said we were too large an organization. We do have 11 clinics all over northeastern Minnesota, but we’re also not wealthy. We don’t make a lot of money. So, it was very disappointing.”
Harvey is investigating working through a local entrepreneur fund with the IRRR that would be a loan of up to $250,000, and he’s working other possibilities for lesser amounts, and he’s hopeful that some of the statewide and national publicity Scenic Rivers has gotten from the funding and dental clinic problems might help to leverage additional funds.
But right now, Harvey unfortunately has more chairs than he can staff anyway.
“At this point, I have one dentist in Cook,” Harvey said, noting that longtime dentist Tim Sprouls recently retired, an issue that will only continue to grown in greater Minnesota in future years as health care providers age out of the system with fewer people to replace them.
“We’re constantly, aggressively recruiting for more dentists,” Harvey said. “We’ve signed three, but they’re not coming for a while – they’re still finishing up school. But we have at least two or three others that we’re in the process of making offers to. If that happens we’ll have to move quicker (on rehabbing the clinic). But I think you can go from here to the North Dakota border and find that everybody’s looking for a dentist.”
Harvey noted that staffing on the medical side of the operation is in good shape, with two more physicians coming this summer and fall after they finish their residencies.
But overall, it’s going to be a delicate balancing act to get through the next several months, Harvey said.
“When there’s so much uncertainty at the federal level with our funding, it’s hard to make any long term plans,” he said. “I need to take care of the patients we have right now and I can’t be thinking about long term stuff. I’ve got to think about what’s happening today.”