To Robert Collins, president of the Leflore County Board of Supervisors, the most pressing reason for the Greenwood Leflore Hospital Board to meet with the county board is to explain options for the financially faltering, publicly owned hospital before any permanent decisions are made.
But he’s willing to hold off on receiving that information at least until the end of the month based on an explanation that Harris Powers Jr., chairman of the hospital board, gave in a June 6 letter to the county board. Powers wrote, “We expect there will be greater clarity regarding potential options to address financial concerns and future operation of GLH during the month of June 2022.”
When options are known to the GLH board, it would meet with the county board and the City Council “to place these matters before you ... in the very near future,” Powers wrote.
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“I can wait,” Collins said Wednesday, adding that “I don’t know if the rest of the board can wait. But we need to make sure that we don’t wait until the deadline and you (the hospital board) present whatever plan you have.”
The next Board of Supervisors meeting will be at 9 a.m. Monday.
The hospital board is “looking at the whole picture,” Collins said. “They know what they are faced with. I really don’t know what they are faced with.”
“We are not against anything the hospital’s negotiating on,” he said. “If they are not negotiating on something, they need to start.”
He explained that he doesn’t think the county board will enforce a call to action it sent in a May 23 invitation asking the hospital board to explain the options at one of the county board meetings this month. If the hospital board did not respond to the invitation by June 6, the letter from Collins said, “A representative of the Leflore County Board of Supervisors will be appointed to contact the University of Mississippi Medical Center and the Baptist Hospital concerning this matter ... .”
But Collins said, “We are not going to make those contacts. It hasn’t been approved by the board to make those contacts.”
UMMC and Baptist Memorial Hospital in Memphis were among the larger health facilities that were mentioned when the Greenwood hospital considered an affiliation in 2018.
At that time, UMMC proposed an agreement, but the offer died for lack of action by the hospital board. That led to a meeting of hundreds of citizens, many of whom were convinced that UMMC presented the best choice for the hospital’s future.
In 2012, the city and county considered selling the hospital, but the City Council voted against moving forward with a sale.
“Greenwood Leflore Hospital has been losing money for years, and the Greenwood hospital has not addressed their problems to satisfy my concerns over the years,” Collins said.
On previous occasions, he and others have voiced concerns circulating in the community about the quality of care at the hospital. But hospital officials have not listened, he said. “When we go back and tell them, they turn a deaf ear to what we are telling them,” Collins said.
“I hope in the near future that the Greenwood Leflore Hospital will talk to the community and ask the community what they want,” Collins said, stressing that the hospital is publicly owned. “It is not Robert Collins’; it’s not the Board of Supervisors’. It belongs to the community.”
- Contact Susan Montgomery at 581-7241 or smontgomery@gwcommonwealth.com.
