A group of Greenwood businesses has hired a national expert in health care law to provide his expertise in the effort to keep Greenwood Leflore Hospital from closing.
Dick Cowart was brought on board about a week ago to lend advice to the hospital and its owners, Leflore County and the city of Greenwood, said Wade Litton, who is serving as the spokesman for the business group.
“We thought that we could bring Dick’s expertise to the table because this is an all-hands-on-deck moment for this community,” said Litton, CEO of Wade Inc., the regional farm equipment dealer founded and headquartered in Greenwood.
Cowart is the chairman of health law and public policy at Baker Donelson, a multi-state law firm, and works out of its Nashville office.
According to the law firm’s website, Cowart “is a recognized authority in advising senior management regarding policy, regulatory and business issues related to health care. He serves as strategic counsel to health care companies (both for profit and not-for-profit) and counsels providers on business, policy and governance issues, with an emphasis on business transactions.”
He is a past president of the American Health Law Association and the recipient of its award for lifetime service to health law.
Cowart is a Mississippi native and a graduate of the University of Mississippi Law School.
“He’s been a part of many major health care acquisitions and restructurings, not only in Mississippi but the rest of the country,” Litton said.
The Greenwood hospital, suffering from years of multimillion-dollar losses compounded by the COVID-19 pandemic, has exhausted its cash reserves and, despite significant cuts in staff and medical services, remains in imminent danger of closing, officials say. The city and county have agreed to subsidize the hospital’s operation for the next few months while the parties work toward a more permanent solution.
Gary Marchand, the hospital’s interim CEO, welcomes Cowart’s input.
“I am aware of Mr. Cowart's knowledge, expertise and experience in health care law at the state and federal level,” Marchand said in an email. “GLH is looking forward to working with him as we pursue regulatory solutions that will add to our long-term viability.”
Litton said that a cross-section of 13 businesses has signed on so far to cover Cowart’s legal fees, which Litton declined to disclose other than to say, “When you’re hiring someone of Dick’s level of expertise, it’s certainly an investment, but it’s an investment that we feel is worth making.”
All of the businesses approached so far have been universally receptive to helping, he said, and others are on a list still to be contacted.
Litton, who is also serving this year as president of the regional economic development organization Delta Council, said the local business community understands how serious a setback it would be for Greenwood to lose its hospital.
The employees and their families of existing companies depend on the care, he said, plus the prospects of landing new companies would be severely diminished without a hospital in place.
“If we don’t have a hospital or some type of health care in Greenwood, our name gets taken off the list of prospective businesses that would come to this community and allow our community not just to be stable but to thrive,” said Litton.
Cowart is the second consultant who has been hired to try to help save the Greenwood hospital. The Board of Supervisors has already retained Samuel Odle, an Indianapolis health care consultant, to be involved in the formulation of a strategy.
Litton said the two consultants should be able to work well together. “We feel that they both bring a lot of expertise to the table,” he said. “Two experts are better than one.”
Robert Collins, president of the Board of Supervisors, and Greenwood Mayor Carolyn McAdams concurred.
“All help is welcome,” Collins said. “Anything that we can do to keep this thing on track. The more the merrier.”
“As many eyes and people that we can have working together on trying to secure the hospital, the better off, I say,” echoed McAdams.
Collins expects the out-of-state consultants will come to the same conclusion most local leaders have already reached. “The bottom line is we’ve got to have some kind of help from the Legislature.”
That is part of a two-pronged strategy Marchand has recently outlined. The other is to pursue a federal designation that would increase the amount of Medicare funding received by the hospital, half of whose patients are covered by the government insurance plan for the elderly and disabled.
Collins said that whatever the strategy, it needs to be finalized by the first of January so that “maybe we’ll know how much pressure or how much begging we’ve got to do when the Legislature convenes.”
He said he worries, given the hospital’s current slimmed-down condition, whether health care offerings will be adequate as winter sets in and cases of COVID-19 and other respiratory diseases rise. The hospital, as part of its austerity measures, shut down in recent months its intensive care unit and scaled back its number of inpatient beds to fewer than 20.
“I’m just trying to figure out what we’re going to be able to do when our beds fill up and our older people need care,” Collins said. “That’s what’s worrying me so bad.”
- Contact Tim Kalich at 662-581-7243 or tkalich@gwcommonwealth.com.
