By SCOTT REESE WILLEY

Hometown Press

The Winnie Community Hospital will not go to the auction block after all, at least because of delinquent property taxes.

Frontier Healthcare, which once owned the hospital and now leases it, paid off the $33,147.41 in delinquent taxes it owed to Chambers County, Trinity Bay Conservation District and the East Chambers Independent School District on Thursday, Jan. 20.

That’s the message being spread by Derk Harmsen, president of the Winnie Coastal Medical Foundation, which purchased the hospital from Frontier Healthcare in late December.

He telephoned The Hometown Press with the good news on Friday.

“Albert (Schwarzer) made the wire transfer last night,” Harmsen said. “The back taxes are paid and so is the 2010 property taxes. The hospital will not be sold on Feb. 1.”

Frontier Healthcare paid $23,183.60 worth of property taxes for the 2010 tax year, Harmsen said.

“The property taxes on the hospital are all paid up,” Harmsen said. “The hospital will not go to auction and we can now move forward on making the hospital profitable.”

The Medical Foundation was created in February 2009 to help support the local hospital, which has struggled financially since Frontier Healthcare purchased it in 2001.

Harmsen reiterated that the Foundation’s purchase of the hospital last month should help Frontier pay off its $4 million or so in debts over the next four to 10 years. That’s because the Foundation has obtained its federal nonprofit status and can receive state and federal grants and funds that a private enterprise like Frontier cannot. Harmsen said the Foundation should receive between $400,000 and $500,000 annually in additional Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements that Frontier could not receive. He said much of that money will be funneled to Frontier to help it pay off its debts. 

Some of the money will go toward improvements to the hospital and on new equipment, he said.

Frontier is leasing the hosptial from the Foundation for an unspecified amount each month.

Harmsen said he was puzzled that the hospital was to be put on the auction block Feb. 1.

“The attorneys on both sides were already in discussion (on paying off the taxes)” he said. “There was never a need for a constable’s sale. It was just a case of politics, that’s all.”

Harmsen said the constable’s sale was nothing more than “a hiccup.”

“We’re not going to lose the hospital because it owes $33,000 or so in back taxes,” he vowed. “I promise you that.”