Rural Minn. health care services merge
Published 10:11 am Thursday, September 20, 2012
![0920.consolidation2](https://www.albertleatribune.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/14/2012/09/0920.consolidation2.jpg)
Alexa Mayerhofer, a registered nurse, answers the phone at a nurse’s workstation on the second floor at the New Prague hospital. -- Jackson Forderer for MPR
By Jennifer Vogel, Minnesota Public Radio News
NEW PRAGUE — The Queen of Peace hospital in New Prague wasn’t in financial trouble when it sold to Mayo Clinic Health System just over a year ago.
“We were doing well,” said Mary Klimp, longtime chief administrative officer for the 25-bed hospital, which was opened in 1952 by an order of Benedictine nuns. “We had some cash reserves and a black bottom line.”
But the health care field is changing dramatically, partly because the federal Affordable Care Act requires expensive electronic medical record systems and seeks to impose a new reimbursement model based on a cooperative approach to care.