International Falls city officials are scheduled to meet at 6 p.m. Monday with representatives of Rainy Lake Medical Center hospital campus and Essentia Health about concerns voiced by area residents about the hospital status.

The council is scheduled to meet at 6 p.m. on the hospital issue, following a regular council meeting set for 5 p.m. Both meetings will take place at the council chambers in the Falls Municipal Building.

Monday’s meeting was prompted by phone calls from area residents to councilors.

Falls Mayor Tim “Chopper” McBride reported in late August that he’d received nearly 100 phone calls in about one week regarding health care in the community.

McBride said at last week’s council meeting that he believed as mayor of the community, he needed to follow up and get information from hospital officials about the status of the hospital.

“People need to know,” McBride said during the meeting. “I’ve stopped counting the calls (I’m receiving on the issue).”

The council sent a letter inviting to the meeting Bob Haley, director of Rainy Lake Medical Center hospital campus; Charles Helleloid, hospital board chairman; and Dan Nikcevich, Essentia Health president and chief medical officer, East Region.

Bob Haley, interim CEO, told The Journal in August that hospital officials “welcome an opportunity to meet with the city council and explain in further detail the future of health care in International Falls.”

Haley told The Journal Tuesday that he and Nikcevich would make a presentation at Monday’s meeting and noted that the hospital continues to be “an integrated health system with Essentia.”

Haley said he hopes to be able to answer questions posed by the community to councilors.

Haley said that at a recent hospital board meeting came “a recommendation from the I Falls side of the board to not integrate (with Essentia) at this time. The full board recommended that Charles Helleloid, chairman of the board, Sue Congrave, vice chairman, plus myself meet with Dr. Dan Nikcevich.”

At that time, he said Congrave and Helleloid had met with Nikcevich “and that meeting was successful.” He said he would be meeting Dr. Nikcevich “to talk about the progress of moving forward with the hospital and Essentia. At this point, we’re not sure what it means until we have our discussions with Essentia.”

Last week, Councilor Cynthia Jaksa noted that the Virginia City Council was considering an affiliation with Essentia Health.

The Mesabi Daily News reported last week that the council, on a 5-2 vote, approved an affiliation deal with Duluth’s Essentia Health, “sacrificing local control of the city-owned Virginia Regional Medical Center in return for a multimillion-dollar cash infusion.”

Haley said Tuesday that every community is different and the Virginia situation differs with the Falls in that the hospital is owned by the city and so has more obstacles to overcome.

Meanwhile, the Mesabi Daily News report said that approval of the deal, which had been explored for two years, required a two-thirds majority, meaning one more “no” vote would have sunk the proposal. Mayor Steve Peterson, who voted against affiliation along with Councilor Nevada Littlewolf, cited what he called “past broken promises by Essentia in relation to the clinic it runs adjacent to the hospital,” said the report.

“Essentia could make a decision ... and we wouldn’t have any say over that,” Littlewolf was quoted in the news story. “We are going to give up our hospital to a corporate entity.”

But several councilors said the city had no better choice, citing the hospital’s declining infrastructure and weak revenue, said the report.

“The infrastructure up there definitely needs a cash infusion,” Councilor Mike Ralston said, according to the report. “We need new equipment. We need upgrades to facilities. That burden would fall on the taxpayers of the city of Virginia.”