Northwest Healthcare needs to begin looking for a new Powell location after Park County commissioners voted to deny a lease renewal for the health care organization, which had been renting a small space in the Park County Annex since 2017. 

The issue, commissioners said, comes down to the county being liable if anything occurs within the space as the STI/STD testing, pap smears, contraceptive shots and other services provided at the clinic constitute in state statute as outpatient health care. 

It’s an issue they were made aware of after commissioner Kelly Simone asked the lease renewal to be pulled from the consent agenda during a meeting in September due to questions she had concerning both what was being done at the office and how the lease was structured. 

That meeting ended with the commissioners asking both Northwest Healthcare and County Attorney Bryan Skoric for more information. 

Discovery of the county’s liability proved to be the biggest obstacle to any commissioners who may otherwise have gone forward with a lease renewal. 

“The government entity is liable for damages resulting from bodily injury, wrongful death or property damage caused by the negligence of public employees while acting in the scope of their duties in the operation of any public hospital or in providing public outpatient health care,” Chair Dossie Overfield read from state statute. 

After Ann Pasek questioned where else people in Powell could get similar services, Overfield said there are still options, such as Park County Public Health and private physicians, although she acknowledged costs might be higher.  

“We’re not wanting to stop the service, we just want to move them over to another location,” Chair Dossie Overfield said, adding, “I’m not sure how the community would feel about spending thousands and thousands of [taxpayer] dollars if we ended up in a lawsuit. We have to make those hard decisions.”

In their unanimous decision to deny the lease renewal, commissioners did agree to extend the organization’s current month-to-month lease through the end of the year to assist Northwest Health Care in finding a new facility. 

“I would agree that there’s a need for this, but I am a little nervous … and I personally am not comfortable signing a lease,” Commissioner Scott Steward said. “I think maybe there’s other places outside of our county building that this can be operated.”

Commissioners all made a point of telling NHC Executive Director Michelle Gutierrez and her supporters they appreciate the work the organization does and hope she finds a new space in Powell. 

Gutierrez said she had no immediate prospects of a new space but hoped to find one down the road. 

Northwest Healthcare, which also has a clinic in Cody, was without a space in Powell for a few years after a previous space fell through when, in 2017, Gutierrez said then Public Health Nurse Administrator Bill Crampton suggested the organization use an office public health didn’t need. 

Since Northwest has only used the office on Wednesday mornings — the small amount of time the space is being used was another concern of some of the commissioners — county staff have at times used the space as well. 

While public health, operating in the same county building, provides some of the same services as Northwest Healthcare, Overfield said as per state law all liability at public health facilities is taken on by the state.