New $50 to $100 million tribal medical center in the works

Blackfeet, Cut Bank health care community working on feasibility study

CUT BANK — The Blackfeet Tribe and the Cut Bank medical community are doing a feasibility study on a $50 million to $100 million Blackfeet-owned regional medical center that would provide health care to northcentral Montanans and Canadians.

By JENNIFER PEREZ
Tribune Hi-Line Bureau

The medical center would be managed by the Northern Rockies Medical Center in Cut Bank and paid for by bonds and a few federal grants, said Leland Ground, senior adviser to the Blackfeet tribal business council.

The tribe plans to take over some health services now administered by Indian Health Service to help bolster the quality of care for the Blackfeet, their Blackfoot relatives in Canada, other tribes and non-Indians in the region, Ground said.

The center would treat diabetics and cancer and burn victims, and would have an intensive care unit, which would save money on the $7,000 helicopter flights from the Blackfeet Reservation to regional hospitals, which now average three or four a week, he said.

"The medical center … is meant to stand on its own feet and is going to run more as a business," said Ground, who lives on a ranch north of Browning. "We believe that we’ll have a diversified enterprise that is going to take on a tremendous meaning to the people of this area."

Tribal officials are working with three banks, including the Hartford Bank in Connecticut, the Native American Bank in Browning and the federally chartered National Cooperative Bank in Wash. D.C. — the largest funding source for Alaskan natives and Indian tribes and public health services, he said.

Architect Larry "L.A." Olson of Billings is doing the feasibility study determine the size, type and cost of such a center, using regional statistics and demographics, Ground said.

"We all have an optimistic goal, hopefully by late next summer to actually start, but that’s really preliminary," said Dale Polla, chief executive officer of Northern Rockies Medical Center.

Northern Rockies was county-owned until last October, when the community-based NMRC Inc. took over operations to try to improve the facility.

A site hasn’t been selected, but preliminary plans are to build the new facility on the eastern end of Glacier County, Polla said.

The location is key, because traveling from rural reservations to the state’s regional hospitals gets expensive, especially because it’s typical for entire families to travel to Great Falls or Missoula to offer support to hospitalized loved ones, Ground said.

"It’s a tremendous economic burden to have to travel a great distance (and pay for) rooms and meals," Ground said. "It would be a lot better if it’s in closer proximity to our reservation."

"We want to be able to provide health care at arms’ reach," he said. "And we have to move toward more prevention, more maintenance and more healing."

The tribe wants to integrate the center with programs at Blackfeet Community College, coupling health care with medical education, training and research on target populations, Ground said.

Not only would such a center be an economic boon, but it also could vastly improve the quality of medical services to the surrounding counties, said Joni Stewart, executive director of the Glacier Action and Involvement group in Cut Bank.

"It’s a win-win situation for everybody involved," Stewart said. "Our medical center has struggled for the last few years, and we see this as an opportunity to really increase and improve the services that we can provide to Glacier County."

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