Posted on 09/29/2016 4:49:43 AM PDT by GailA
QUITMAN COUNTY, MS (WMC) -
Residents in North Mississippi will soon be forced to find a new way to receive emergency medical services after the Quitman County Hospital closes on Thursday.
Hospital officials said the hospital is shutting down because of funding. Employees were notified last week about the closure.
(Excerpt) Read more at wdam.com ...
Probably will all go to Baptist Desoto
“Quitman County is in the heart of the Mississippi Delta, where the poverty there matches several Third world countries.”
Agrred. My then-girlfriend and I travelled thru the Delta in the summer of ‘97. We really went off the beaten path and looked around.
I knew the Delta was poor but I wasn’t ready for what I really saw. I was shocked. The only other place in the US that looked as bad was the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota.
Scarily enough, there were probably parts of the Delta I didn’t see that were worse than what I did see. But among the blacks I did run into, most were cordial enough.
I lived in Mississippi over 40 years. What outsiders thought of Mississippi, we think of the Delta. Going through the Delta is like going back 50-80 years, a real time warp. Back when I worked for the Mississippi Dept. Of Transportation, there’d be 70 year old black men saying “yes sir” and “no sir” to me....and I was just a 25 year old kid!
Like the Clintons.
I wonder how much of this hospital's budget ended up enriching Rep. Thompson.
I’m not picking a fight here, but the decline of rural hospitals has been going on for a long, long time. This just happens to be one of the very few subjects that I know something about.
In the 1950’s there was a big push to encourage rural counties to develop their own hospitals. Most were in the 100-200 bed range - not all that big. (I was until recently the Director of Capital Projects for a 1,600 bed county hospital system in three campuses here in Florida.) These hospitals from the 50’s were primarily funded through revenue bonds issued by the counties supplemented by local fund raising. Then as now, hospital beds are “commissioned” by state health departments based on community needs, so in order to grow (or shrink), any change in the number of beds needs to be approved by the state. As technology and building codes for hospitals were improved, these older hospitals became more expensive to operate and virtually impossible to keep code-compliant (ADA, environmental challenges, etc.). Not surprisingly, after about 40 years of operation, these hospitals were no longer economically viable and faced bankruptcy or worse.
In the late 1990’s Congress actually did something right. Congress passed the Critical Access Hospital Act (CAHA) which allowed investors to purchase existing rural hospitals for pennies on the dollar, decommission the existing beds, and build new, code compliant 25 bed CAH’s. The key to the success of this program is that investors would be allowed to roll the cost of the initial purchase of the ‘old’ facility into the new hospital and depreciate that investment at the same rate as the depreciation of the new building. This is a substantial tax advantage and led to the creation of many, many CAH’s. In addition, the CAH’s would be affiliated with regional hospital who provided specialty caregivers that rotated from the ‘parent’ hospital to the CAH. The net result was intended to bring the size of the local healthcare delivery system into line with the local populations and still provide a high level of care.
Unfortunately, this did not solve the basic problem of lifestyle choices for the full-time caregivers who would be required to staff the new CAH’s. Nor did it address the cost control for Medicare and Medicaid procedures mandated by the Department of HHS.
Bottom line, the funding of the rural healthcare systems is not a federal issue. It is funded through local bond sources and investors, with significant incentives provided through the CAHA.
I hope this helps.
Twenty-five years for a MS Democrat is just starting. Stennis was a senator for 41 years; Eastland, some 35 years. People like longevity there.
The Natchez Trace ends at the delta; it is picturesque.
We also stopped in Natchez for a day and a half. Stayed at the old Eola Hotel. Our room had a balcony. The place oozed of old South charm.
Ate the best plate of red beans and rice I’ve ever had at a restaurant in downtown Natchez. Visited a few of the antebellum mansions nearby. We walked a section of the old Natchex Trace too.
Oh yes, I’d love to get back there again sometime.
Wow.
Yes and from all my friend Evelyn says it is a horrid place. They put her in a unclean bed following cancer surgery still bloody from the last patient. She they ended up suing them over it and the mistreatment and won. She said she not take her dog there.
What a shame! We don’t need Obama care, we need Free Market Care...
It should be noted that there are 11 counties in Mississippi with less than 10,000 residents. Another 14 counties are between 10 and 15 thousand residents. I frankly get reach any understanding how you’d be able to afford “luxury” options in those 25 counties. It’s one thing to run a clinic in every county but to offer any major operations? No....it makes no financial sense. Go out to North Dakota and they have the same issues.
Something like 20 of Iowa’s 99 counties have less than 10,000 people. It’s not just hospitals that can’t be afforded under today’s requirements.
When local government was paid for locally, it was nobody’s business what services were offered. Now, federal and state governments have unlimited tentacles and simply cannot realistically pay for everything they feel obligated to be involved in.
I count 13 counties in Alabama with less than 15,000 residents.
This brings me to an odd question. At what point....population-wise....can you sustain a legit hospital with the current rules within a county?
It seems to me that you need a minimum of 40,000 residents in a county, but I’m just guessing on this. Is this the whole game....that a quarter of all the counties in the US will see hospitals shut down over the next decade because of the system in place?
Typical hospitals, even rural ones, cost over a million dollars per bed to build, and at least $2,000 per day per bed to keep operating. The math just doesn’t work.
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