North Central Kansas Medical Center presents 2025 economic impact and new bronchoscopy program to Cloud County commissioners

Ron Harrington, representing North Central Kansas Medical Center (NCKMC), presented the hospital’s 2025 regional impact report to the Cloud County Board of Commissioners on Jan. 26. Harrington said the center employed 142 health workers and 75 non-health workers, with total employee income of $16.5 million and an estimated $6.8 million in local retail spending by those employees that generated about $132,900 in sales tax revenue.

Harrington reported clinical and utilization figures for 2025, saying NCKMC performed 494 surgeries, had 3,134 emergency department visits, 16,800 Family Care Center visits and 5,747 walk-in visits. He said the hospital recorded about $1.6 million in bad debt from unpaid patient bills, provided roughly $503,000 in charity care and derived about 49% of payor revenue from Medicare.

Harrington described the 2024 launch of an Ion Robotic-Assisted bronchoscopy program to bring advanced lung cancer diagnostics to local patients. The transcript record supplied to the board lists both '15 procedures' completed and '77 confirmed cancer diagnoses' tied to the program; those two reported numbers are inconsistent as provided in the record but were presented by Harrington and are reported here as presented.

The presentation underscores the hospital’s role in the county’s health-care capacity and local economy, officials said. The commissioners did not take further action on the presentation beyond receiving the report.