FERRIDAY — If Riverland Medical Center was to move, any location on a major thoroughfare within three miles of the Vidalia city limits would cost it a major revenue stream.

“Absolutely no decision has been made on replacing the current facility, the location of a possible new facility or the services of that facility,” RMC Administrator Billy Rucker said in a statement released this week.

“Decisions are pending the completion and presentation of feasibility and focus group research studies. It is certain, however, that to maintain Riverland’s ‘critical access’ status and funding, the facility cannot be located within 10 miles of Merit Hospital in Natchez.”

Rucker’s statement was first read during the September meeting of RMC’s board this week. The hospital board has commissioned feasibility studies to determine what are the best moves for future development at the hospital.

As a critical access hospital, Riverland is able to receive cost-based reimbursements from Medicare instead of fixed-rate reimbursements. The critical access program is intended to help small, rural hospitals serve populations that might not otherwise have access to a local, short-term care hospital.

Because of its size, Merit Health Natchez — formerly Natchez Regional Medical Center — is not eligible for critical access status.

Rucker said the hospital administration plans to share the results of its feasibility study with the hospital commission in early November.

Those results will include work by The Communication Institute and Percy and Company to find out the opinions of the residents of Ferriday and Vidalia as well as physicians and employees of the hospital about what services they want from the hospital and where they think it should be located.

“The hospital is owned by the citizens of Concordia, and services must reflect their needs,” Rucker said. “It is also very important that our facility be attractive to primary care and specialty physicians.”

Discussion of seeking a feasibility study that might ultimately lead to renovations or replacement of the hospital began last August, when doctors approached the hospital administration about what could be done to improve it in the future.

Rucker said a feasibility study is a required part of how the hospital might fund any improvements.

“In our evaluation process, we learned that North Caddo and West Feliciana Parish Hospitals, which are both critical access hospitals, have funded their new hospitals with loans from the U.S. Department of Agriculture,” he said. “Requirements for these loans include feasibility studies that show that our hospital can optimize the funds from these loans as well as repay these loans.”

The hospital had a feasibility report conducted by the LaPorte group of Metairie last year, but hospital officials said it was too vague and did not take into account the consolidation of the Natchez hospitals when looking at the local health care market.

Stroudwater and Associates is conducting the current feasibility study, which Rucker said would include examinations of market share, financial forecasts and other in-depth analysis of data that could impact the success of a proposed new hospital.

RMC opened in 1964 as Concordia Parish Hospital. It is partially funded through a one-fourth-of-1-percent sales tax, which is expected to generate $660,000 annually.