Even as Greenwood Leflore Hospital continues to hammer out the details on a long-term lease with the University of Mississippi Medical Center, it is already transitioning some of its services to the state’s largest medical institution.
The Greenwood hospital has announced that effective Oct. 15, two of its outpatient clinics — one for obstetrics and gynecology, the other for pediatrics — will become part of UMMC’s network.
This also means that the hospital’s labor and delivery unit, which has been closed since mid-August, most likely will not reopen even after the prospective lease is completed with UMMC. Also, there will be no inpatient coverage at the Greenwood hospital for pediatric patients after Oct. 15.
One of the two obstetricians who will not be staying on with UMMC said he was disappointed by the apparently long-term closure of the maternity ward in Greenwood and claims he had been led to believe less than two months ago that this would not happen.
Dr. Terry McMillin
“None of us had any input into this decision,” said Dr. Terry McMillin. “It’s not what we wanted.”
The physician said he is concerned not only that expectant mothers in Greenwood will have to travel farther to deliver but also that women in general may have less access to specialists for medical conditions specific to them.
“The likelihood of having some bad outcomes, at least in the short term, is certainly going to increase,” he said.
On Tuesday, the hospital posted a notice on its website and Facebook page alerting expectant mothers that it was “permanently closing” the labor and delivery unit.
“If you are having contractions, make arrangements to visit another hospital that is providing Labor & Delivery services,” the announcement reads. “For the health and safety of you and your unborn child, it is vital that before delivery you have adequate time to get to another hospital.”
The labor and delivery unit at the Greenwood hospital was originally closed following a sewage leak beneath one of the buildings that shut down most of the hospital for three days in August. After the sewage leak was resolved, the hospital administration opted to keep that unit closed as well as the intensive care unit. Those decisions were part of an increasing number of cost-cutting measures the financially troubled hospital has taken to avoid running out of cash before a lease with UMMC can be finalized. There have also been two rounds of layoffs since May, affecting about 70 employees.
McMillin said that shortly after the sewage incident, he had been told by Gary Marchand, the interim CEO, that not only the labor and delivery unit would be reopening, but so would a related post-partum unit that had been shut down for more than a year. Two days later, McMillin said, he was informed the hospital had changed its mind.
“What changed in that short period of time?” asked McMillin. “Was it that UMMC started calling the shots, what we’re gonna do? I don’t know. I can’t answer that.”
Hemphill said that several expectant mothers have come to the Greenwood hospital's emergency room since the labor and delivery unit closed, but so far no babies have had to be birthed in the emergency room.
“Obviously we have doctors in the emergency room. They’re capable of delivering babies. But we don’t need an influx of expectant mothers showing at our emergency room when they should try to get to a hospital where they have an active labor and delivery unit. We are asking them to plan ahead, to think ahead.”
The closest hospitals to Greenwood with maternity wards are UMMC’s hospital in Grenada and South Sunflower County Hospital in Indianola, both about 30 miles away. Neither North Sunflower Medical Center in Ruleville nor Tyler Holmes Memorial Hospital in Winona deliver babies except in an emergency.
Hundreds of babies were being delivered annually at the Greenwood hospital before the recent closure of the labor and delivery unit. Since 2017, the maternity ward had averaged more than 400 babies a year, according to figures provided by the hospital, although the numbers had been dropping for the past two years.
Dr. Murry Adams
Hemphill said that at least one obstetrician, Dr. Murry Adams, and two nurse practitioners, Tracey Mullins and Heather Wilkey, will continue to work at Greenwood OB/GYN Associates when the clinic becomes part of UMMC. Adams recently returned to his hometown to practice.
McMillin said that both he and the other departing obstetrician, Dr. Kimberly Sanford, had decided not to sign on with UMMC because of the setup, with the clinic in Greenwood but all maternal deliveries and gynecological surgeries being performed in Grenada.
“As an obstetrician, you can’t be 30 or 40 minutes away in Greenwood and cover laboring patients. You have to physically be present. What that means is, 10 days a month we (would) have to be physically present in Grenada, away from our families, wives. Dr. Sanford has an elderly mother who’s not well. The logistics don’t work out.”
He said he asked Dodie McElmurray, the CEO of the Grenada hospital, whether UMMC would reopen the labor and delivery unit in Greenwood within a year, but she was noncommital. A UMMC spokeswoman in Jackson said Wednesday it had no comment on its plans for the Greenwood hospital.
McMillin said he understood why UMMC would not want to duplicate services by operating two maternity wards so close together, but he questioned why Greenwood would be the one to lose out. According to McMillin, the Grenada hospital has only one full-time obstetrician and does half the volume of Greenwood.
Dr. Kimberly Sanford
McMillin, who has practiced in Greenwood for all but four of the past 26 years, said he is trying to get on with an obstetrical hospitalist group based in South Carolina that works with several Mississippi hospitals. Sanford, who joined the Greenwood hospital in 2016, could not be reached Wednesday. Clinic staff were calling her patients to inform them that her last day would be Thursday.
Sanford wants to join another full-time practice, according to McMillin. “Obviously, that will be somewhere else than here,” he said.
McMillin said although a maternity ward may not be a big moneymaker for a hospital, it has incidental financial benefits.
“Everyone understands that who determines health care in the family is the mother. You carry the mother somewhere else to start getting her care, very soon the rest of the family’s going to follow that.”
Both Greenwood OB/GYN Associates and the Greenwood Children’s Clinic will remain in their current locations across the street from the hospital. Hemphill said that UMMC is leasing both buildings and purchasing the furniture and fixtures within them.
Even before the lease negotiations began, UMMC had expressed an interest in taking over the Children’s Clinics, according to Hemphill. All three pediatricians now practicing there — Drs. Billy Boldon, Lisa Huddleston and Claudine Stevens — are staying on when it becomes part of Children’s of Mississippi, UMMC’s statewide network of pediatric clinics. So are three nurse practitioners, Karlee Kelly, Shandra McClellan and Susan McGilvra.
Marchand said in a prepared statement Wednesday that the COVID-19 pandemic has contributed to the tough and, in some quarters, unpopular decisions the hospital administration has had to make. Even though the hospital, since the beginning of the pandemic in 2020, has received more than $34 million in mostly federal pandemic-related grants, it’s not been enough to offset the downturn in patient volumes and the increased costs, particularly for nurses and other skilled labor, the interim CEO has said.
“The challenges the hospital has faced through the pandemic, including the Delta and Omicron waves, have contributed to these decisions,” Marchand said. “Provider relief funds under the CARES Act were not sufficient to offset the loss of revenues experienced in recent months, and reimbursement for routine services has not kept pace with higher labor cost and other inflationary pressures.”
- Contact Tim Kalich at 662-581-7243 or tkalich@gwcommonwealth.com.
The original version of this article incorrectly reported that Greenwood Leflore Hospital's emergency room has delivered babies of women in active labor since the closure of the hospital's maternity ward. It has not.
