Desperate times call for desperate measures.
That’s the sense I get from Greenwood Leflore Hospital’s decision, at least for now, to only partially reopen after being cleared to return to business as normal by the Mississippi State Department of Health.
If the hospital didn’t have enough problems already, this past week’s back-up in a sewer line added to them. Going three days without many of its revenue streams is not good for a medical facility that was already suffering from low patient volumes.
After the hospital got the all clear on Thursday to start admitting patients again, it opted to not do so. For now, except for mothers delivering babies, most anyone else whose condition would require an overnight stay at the hospital is being transferred elsewhere.
The decision to not immediately restart admitting patients came as a bit of a shock. In a period of less than 72 hours, what began as a cautious safety measure morphed into a way for the hospital to buy time as it progresses toward its desired goal of being taken over by a larger medical institution.
From a bean counter’s point of view, doing without inpatients — even if that means fewer lucrative surgeries — may make sense. It may be more economical to have no inpatients than to have too few to cover the costs of staffing up the intensive care unit and other parts of the hospital where those with serious injuries or illnesses are cared for. Of late, the hospital has only been able to fill about one-sixth of its 208-bed capacity.
Still, it’s sobering to think that, as long as this policy is in place, a good portion of those who need a hospital the most are not going to have one in Greenwood to meet their needs. If it’s an emergency, the hospital will treat them and stabilize them, but it will only keep them long enough to find another medical facility to send them to.
Given the experience of the past couple of years with COVID-19, that’s a frightening thought. The number of people who are getting seriously ill from the virus has greatly diminished, thanks to vaccinations and infection-acquired immunities. No one is certain, though, how long that might hold. If another especially deadly strain were to arrive this fall, could the hospital quickly crank back up its intensive care unit if it’s been mothballed for weeks or months? And if it couldn’t, would other hospitals, feeling their own surge in COVID patients, be able to handle the overflow from Greenwood?
This community is not used to thinking about such possibilities. For generations we have been blessed with a full-service hospital that could provide most of the care you could get anywhere else. Currently that’s not so.
Still, this is precisely where the Greenwood hospital was headed if it had continued to try to operate as a stand-alone facility, given the multiple forces working against rural hospitals — declining populations, a high percentage of uninsured patients, and inadequate reimbursements from public and private insurers. Gov. Tate Reeves and the Republican majorities in the Legislature have made matters worse in Mississippi by their stubborn resistance to expanding Medicaid.
Greenwood Leflore Hospital, fingers crossed, has a plan in the works that could restore the services it has shed in recent months and hopefully add new ones.
We are being told that at least one major hospital system — presumably the University of Mississippi Medical Center — is working on submitting a proposal by the Aug. 31 deadline for bids on a long-term lease.
It would be hard at this stage for the Greenwood City Council and the Leflore County Board of Supervisors, which have the ultimate say in leasing the publicly owned hospital, to turn down any reasonable offer.
It took years to convince all the major players that there was no other way to save the Greenwood hospital than to affiliate with a larger one. Now that this has been accomplished, however, there is a growing concern over whether the hospital can keep its doors open long enough for a deal to be finalized.
The most realistic projection has it taking until December to go through all the paces required by state law to have a new operator in place. Based on the hospital’s current loss trends and financial obligations, though, it could be out of cash a month or more before then.
To squeeze through that gap, the hospital is hitting up its vendors for temporary price concessions. There’s a request to Greenwood Utilities, not yet acted upon, for an estimated $120,000 or so a month in free electricity and water. The city and county could be pressed to pony up, too.
If that’s not enough, I’m not sure what else the hospital could do but cut even more services and institute substantial layoffs.
Desperate times indeed.
There are a lot of smart and dedicated people at the hospital trying to figure this out one crisis at a time.
Let’s hope for them and for us that they can hang in there long enough to get to the finish line.
- Contact Tim Kalich at 662-581-7243 or tkalich@gwcommonwealth.com.
