Mississippi hospital and government officials say the problems facing Greenwood Leflore Hospital are plaguing the entire state.
“The pandemic only exacerbated the problems we already had,” explained Mississippi Hospital Association CEO Tim Moore to the Greenwood Voters League on Wednesday. “It made it get here sooner.”
Moore, along with Insurance Commissioner Mike Chaney and Higher Education Commissioner Alfred Rankins Jr., spoke to a small audience, with Moore and Chaney emphasizing health care while Rankins spoke about higher education.
“We have got a revenue problem,” said Moore, a former chief operating officer at Greenwood Leflore Hospital. “We have got to fix that.”
He said expenses for hospitals around the state exploded while revenues didn’t keep pace.
Greenwood Leflore Hospital has been losing money for years and has only enough cash on hand to keep its doors open through December, according to hospital officials.
It has been seeking a friendly takeover by the University of Mississippi Medical Center, the largest hospital in the state, based in Jackson.
GLH and UMMC officials have been in negotiations since early September on a long-term lease.
The resulting agreement must be presented to the Greenwood City Council and Leflore County Board of Supervisors for approval. It must also be approved by the state College Board, which oversees UMMC.
Chaney said, apparently incorrectly, during his remarks to the Voters League that he understood negotiations between the Greenwood hospital and UMMC broke down last week.
Gary Marchand, the interim CEO of Greenwood Leflore Hospital, said Thursday that Chaney was misinformed. Negotiations have not stalled but only slowed, Marchand said, “because we’re getting down to some meaty issues and how they’re dealt with in various documents.”
He said that he and two of the hospital board members — Chairman Harris Powers Jr. and Vice Chairman Marcus Banks — will be meeting next week with “all the right people in the room from University” to settle on the final terms in the documents to lease the Greenwood hospital to UMMC for 10 years, with the option for two additional 10-year renewals.
He said the process remains on schedule to have a lease proposal ready for the College Board’s consideration at its final scheduled meeting of the year on Nov. 17.
Marchand said that the Greenwood hospital remains regularly engaged with UMMC in transitioning over some of its services, such as labor and delivery, all of which is now being referred to UMMC’s hospital in Grenada. On Saturday, UMMC is scheduled to take over ownership of the hospital’s outpatient clinics for pediatrics and for obstetrics and gynecology.
Moore said the problems facing Greenwood Leflore Hospital are being seen statewide.
“This is not going to be exclusively in the Delta,” he said. “We’ve got other hospitals across the state that are equally in as much peril as you see right here.”
State Sen. David Jordan, who is also the president of the Voters League, asked Moore how much it would cost for the state to bail out Mississippi’s struggling hospitals. Moore estimated it could be as high as $650 million.
Another major health-care issue in Mississippi is the ongoing dispute between UMMC and Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Mississippi. Chaney said negotiations between the hospital and the insurer have broken down.
The two sides have been at odds for months over reimbursement rates.
Prior to his appearance at the Voters League, Chaney told Y’all Politics that he had suspended mediation as of last Friday between UMCC and Blue Cross. He told the conservative news site that “no progress has been reported to my office in the last six weeks.”
For those with Blue Cross insurance, UMMC is currently considered out-of-network, which means patients will pay higher out-of-pocket expenses for visits and procedures.
Chaney told the Voters League that his department has received numerous complaints of UMMC not taking patients with Blue Cross.
“I got two today,” he said. “They are generated by either the doctors at the hospital or the hospital itself saying it’s Blue Cross’s fault.”
Chaney said the Legislature may have to step in to help resolve the dispute.
- Contact Kevin Edwards at 662-581-7233 or kedwards@gwcommonwealth.com. Contact Tim Kalich at 662-581-7243 or tkalich@gwcommonwealth.com.
