MARK WAITE / PVT Former Nye County Commissioner Henry Neth addresses the present board of county commissioners about the Pahrump Medical Center building. Advertisement

Former Nye County Commissioner Henry Neth returned to the Bob Ruud Community Center Tuesday to request the county reopen the lease with Dr. Pejman Bady for the old Pahrump Medical Center for breach of contract

Neth, who now sits on the Desert View Hospital advisory board, said the mission of the county-owned facility has changed, and its now competing with the hospital.

U.S. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., presented a check for $750,000 to reopen PMC and provide emergency medical service before the hospital was open.

Commissioners hastily threw together a contract with Bady, president and owner of Advanced Medical Center, just ahead of an April 1, 2005, deadline when the property could have reverted back to Preferred Equities Corp. Bady was deemed the only responsive bidder after a previous bidder, Kare Healthcare of Pasadena, Calif., defaulted.

The Bady contract was held up until Sept. 21, 2005, after Mego Financial Corp., Preferred Equities' parent company, filed suit in U.S. bankruptcy court. Nye County settled the case by paying $525,000 for the building.

"At that time the hospital was under construction and the valley was without 24-hour medical care. The contract is pretty clear -- the reason it was put in place was for that emergency medical care," Neth said.

Desert View Hospital opened the following year in April 2006.

Neth said the cost of leasing the facility, at 50 cents per square foot, hasn't changed since 2005. He said the usual going rate for medical office space is $1.20 per square foot.

"It's in direct competition with the hospital. I'm not against competition, competition is great. But it's direct, unfair competition, and it's been subsidized by the county in my belief," Neth said.

"It becomes a problem for all the other doctors in the valley. They have to pay the going rate," he said.

Neth said he's been researching county agendas to find out who voted for building a 5,000-square-foot addition to the medical center and why. Neth said it allows Bady to bring in more specialists that compete with the hospital. Neth said he wasn't charged any additional rent once the addition was built.

"I believe there's a breach of contract here. I believe this lease is very clear about that facility being used as emergency medical care, not as a doctor's facility. I would ask there be an agenda item brought forward," Neth said.

His remarks were delivered under public comment during which commissioners rarely issue a response.

Last month Betsy Heller, representing Rainbow Ranch properties, which manages four medical buildings on East Calvada Boulevard, complained the county contract with an urgent care facility was hurting the private medical industry, which can't compete with the county's subsidy.

"Two of the large, general practices in town that had suites in my buildings have sold this past year, gone under," Heller said. "It's about $13,000 per month in loss revenue for the rate subsidizing. That's a significant leverage against the docs and landlords in town."

Heller also spoke during public comment and urged commissioners to change the rent to fair-market value when the lease expires in November 2010.

"The original idea was for 24-hour care. That was the compelling reason for the county to allow him to go into that building at a reduced rate," Neth said. He served on the county commission from 2000 to 2004.

Commissioner Butch Borasky, contacted after the meeting, wasn't too inclined to reopen the lease early. Borasky noted it was Neth who negotiated a lease for five years back in 2005.

"Dr. Bady hasn't done anything to warrant fooling with his lease," Borasky said. "We had to have someone in the medical center, the hospital wasn't open. He made a five-year agreement and he wants to change it because one person is belly-aching they're losing doctors. Well everything is slowing down, we're losing doctors. It isn't because Bady has a lease across the street."

In February 2007, commissioners voted to allow Bady to reduce the daily hours of operation at PMC from 14 to 12. At that time, former Desert View Chief Executive Officer David Rencher endorsed the move, noting the number of patients seeking treatment drops off rapidly after 8 p.m.

Rencher wrote: "It does not serve the interests of the community for multiple facilities to be open when the demand for services is less than the capacity of any one of them. This is not an issue of better competition yields a better product. The hospital must be open 24/7, thus services for urgent and emergent care are available."

Former Pahrump Town Board member John McDonald, in a letter to the Nevada Attorney General's office dated April 14, 2008, wrote about the PMC lease, saying, "A valuable facility paid for by the citizens of Pahrump was leased at far below its fair-market value without a corresponding benefit to the residents of Pahrump. Other physicians would not move their practices to Pahrump and compete with a taxpayer-subsidized, private, for-profit medical practice."