2015/04/25 – Gov. Phil Bryant wants to pay lip service to state hospitals, but his platitudes aren’t helping their bottom line.

The governor is pushing to create healthcare-based economic development zones in the state, but his proposal won’t help medical facilities like MontfortJonesMemorialHospital in Kosciusko, which closed its intensive care unit and laid off 38 employees in the past year.  The more profitable Jackson-based Baptist Health Systems announced that it would take over operating the facility in June and would change its name to Baptist Medical Center-Attala.  Attala County Supervisor Troy Hodges told reporters that the facility had been running in the red and was about to close, depriving hundreds of rural occupants of accessible healthcare.

The hospital and other rural facilities like it are suffering because they are trapped in a hole created by the nation’s evolving healthcare system and the governor’s unwillingness to embrace that evolution.  For years the federal government had been reimbursing hospitals for their care of uninsured, non-paying patients through the Disproportionate Share Hospital (DSH) program.  When Congress passed the Affordable Care Act in 2010, however, lawmakers expected the new law to expand Medicaid coverage to patients who would fall under the DSH umbrella.  Seeing no point to the program—and eager to funnel the money to other priorities—Congress did away with the DSH program.

But Bryant and Republican lawmakers in Mississippi have refused to expand the Medicaid program, leaving DSH patients in the dirt.  Hospitals are expected to care for ill or dying patients, but they are no longer reimbursed by the federal government for their humane behavior—leaving them in a financial hole if a large proportion of their patients are poor.

“This would be a non-issue if our legislators would simply find their humanity and expand Medicaid,” said MSNAACP head Derrick Johnson.  “While they stall and stamp their feet, they’re hurting a critical section of the middle class who make too much to qualify for Medicaid, but don’t make enough to collect federal insurance subsidies.  Meanwhile, our hospitals are suffering.”

A group appointed by Hodges and other supervisors determined that the Kosciusko facility was losing $30,000 every week as legislators waffled on Medicaid expansion.  The county government issued $1 million in bonds to pay the hospital’s bills.  County residents will have to pay that money back, however, along with an additional $6 million the county previously authorized to save the facility.

Hospitals feeling the pinch from evaporating DSH payments are beginning to turn away the poor and underserved.  Stewpot Opportunity Center Director Christie Burnett told the MSNAACP that one local hospital has been dumping mentally ill patients at its shelter for the past week.  The shelter she operates is designed as a place to house the homeless during the day and keep them off the street.  She said it is not, under any circumstances, designed to treat the mentally ill.

“That’s just not what we do here, and I think if they really cared to do their research or cared about their patients, they’d know this.  Or they’re ignoring it and just trying to get rid of a problem.  Either way, it’s not the right thing to do,” Burnett told the MSNAACP.

Burnett described incidents of Merit Health Central, which was formerly known as Central Mississippi Medical Center, dropping off a 19-year-old patient with the intelligence of a six-year-old—someone who clearly requires extra care.  Burnett said another incident involved the hospital dumping a relapsing alcoholic, claiming that her shelter offered detox services, which it does not.

Merit Health Central Emergency Department Director Dr. Richard Miles told The Clarion-Ledger that Opportunity Center had agreed to take patients at certain hours.  Burnett told reporters that she had no idea what Miles was talking about.

Though four recent cases made the news this month, Burnett said local hospitals have made a habit of dumping potentially vulnerable patients for a while.

“They’ve stopped dropping them off over the last few days now that this story is circulating, but they’ll start again soon when it quiets down.  I’m pretty sure of that,” said Burnett.

One of the recently abandoned patients told The Clarion-Ledger that he did not think the hospital would have callously dumped him if he had had adequate insurance.

Source: MS NAACP Staff