Inspired in part by the results of an unscientific Times-Gazette web poll, Bedford County Financial Management Committee said Tuesday night it would like to conduct a more scientific poll of local attitudes towards selling Bedford County Nursing Home.

When the county sold Bedford County Medical Center to Franklin-based Community Health Systems in 2005, it kept the attached nursing home, believing it to be profitable and believing the county has a responsibility to provide low-cost long-term care. The nursing home is on track to make a six-figure profit for the current fiscal year.

But recent discussions indicate that the nursing home's costs will rise dramatically once BCMC moves to its new location this summer and the county is responsible for maintenance and operation of the entire Union Street campus. A high-powered boiler which currently serves both the hospital and the nursing home will cost $45,000 to $50,000 per month to operate and must be manned around the clock. It would also be expensive to replace the boiler with some alternative system.

"Either way we do it, it's going to be an additional expense," said finance committee member Joe Tillett.

There will also be costs for landscaping the campus and for maintenance of the soon-to-be-vacant hospital building.

The county's construction consultant, Bud Melson, is currently investigating the situation.

County commissioners are deeply divided on the issue of the nursing home. Some favor selling, believing that the time has passed for the county to be involved in health care and that the taxpayers would be best served by disposing of the facility. Others are just as deeply determined to keep the facility, believing that another owner would have stricter admission requirements and therefore some needy patients would be unable to get care.

Commissioner Bobby Vannatta said Tuesday night that he opposes selling the nursing home in principle, but if it turns out that the nursing home is a liability the county may have no choice but to sell it.

Last month, 56.4 percent of the participants in a T-G web site poll favored selling the nursing home. But that poll, like any voluntary, self-selected web poll, is not scientific because there's no guarantee that the people who choose to vote represent a true cross-section of the public.

Tillett mentioned the T-G web survey Tuesday night and said said a professional independent study needs to be conducted, like the one which the county conducted about the hospital several years ago. That study revealed that the hospital was unlikely to be successful without a new building, and since the county could not afford to build a new hospital that study helped to tip the scales in favor of selling BCMC.

Last month, the commission's courthouse and county property committee proposed setting up a study committee to take a look at the sale of the nursing home. The study committee would be composed of two members from each of the commission's four standing committees.

In other discussion Tuesday night:

The committee wants its attorney to pursue a dispute with Community Health Systems over rent the county believes it is owed for the Medical Arts Building.

When the county sold Bedford County Medical Center, it contracted with BCMC to continue to manage the Medical Arts Building behind the hospital as long as the hospital was still operating at its Union Street location. BCMC collects rent and passes it along to the county, less maintenance costs.

But BCMC has apparently not been paying rent to the county for as many as nine physicians who have been recruited and set up in vacant space in the MAB. Those physicians are reportedly being given space as part of their recruitment packages. But the county contends that it is still owed rent on the space, regardless of BCMC's arrangement with the physicians.

"We're due money based on square footage that's been occupied by those physicians since they've been there," said Tillett. The county's maintenance and utility costs have increased as a result of the additional physicians being there, said committee members.

The finance committee voted to ask the county attorney to investigate the matter.

The county does have some bargaining chips in dealing with the hospital, which has asked for the assistance of the county-owned ambulance service in transporting patients to its new location in July and which would like to continue renting a floor of the old Doctor's Building on Union Street as the headquarters for Bedford Home Health.

After the hospital moves this summer, the county will begin managing MAB on its own.