Rural hospital’s grim finances spur uncertain future for healthcare in Greenwood
By Gwen Dilworth | Originally published by Mississippi Today
Curressia Brown was eight months pregnant when she experienced heart failure and was rushed to Greenwood Leflore Hospital.
Brown’s proximity to the public hospital — five miles from her home — saved her life and that of her now 23-year-old daughter.
“But for Greenwood Leflore Hospital, I wouldn’t be here, nor would my daughter,” she told Mississippi Today.
But the future of the 25-bed hospital in Greenwood, which has treated patients in the Mississippi Delta for more than a century, hangs in the balance amid its steadily worsening financial situation. In an effort to stay afloat and secure a potential partnership with a larger health system, the hospital in recent weeks laid off staff, closed clinics, warned workers of the possibility of mass layoffs ahead of a potential June 15 closure and filed for bankruptcy, leaving the community facing growing uncertainty over whether the facility will survive.
Greenwood Leflore Hospital officials said these moves are intended to ensure the hospital can continue to provide healthcare in Leflore County as it negotiates a potential takeover with the University of Mississippi Medical Center.
“While there are no guarantees, filing for bankruptcy does not mean the hospital will close,” officials wrote in an April 14 statement. “Bankruptcy will serve as a tool to stabilize operations by restructuring debt and addressing unprofitable contracts, with the goal of continuing to serve the community.”
Greenwood Leflore Hospital, owned by the City of Greenwood and Leflore County, has faced serious financial challenges since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, repeatedly warning its fragile condition could force it to close. Services, including intensive care and labor and delivery, were whittled away in an effort to keep it afloat. The hospital’s financial instability has intensified over the last year as the result of a dispute with the Mississippi Division of Medicaid over debts owed by the hospital, according to officials.
If the hospital were to close its doors, patients would have to rely upon UMMC Grenada, the nearest hospital, located over 30 miles away.
Lora Evans, the hospital’s former director of admissions and managed care contracting at the Greenwood Leflore Hospital, was one of 86 staff members laid off on April 8. She said maintaining a hospital in Greenwood is more important than keeping her job.
“If my job had to be sacrificed so we’ll have a hospital for the community, so be it,” Evans said.
Evans understands firsthand the impact a rural hospital closure can have on a community. She grew up in Louise, a small town of about 200 residents in Humphreys County. When the hospital in nearby Belzoni shut down in 2013, her family had to travel further for care, sometimes driving for as long as an hour to Greenwood.
Greenwood Leflore Hospital’s outpatient and cardiac rehabilitation centers will treat their final patients on Friday. The after-hours clinic and wellness center closed April 8.
Brown said her 94-year-old mother-in-law, who has severe mobility issues and depends on the hospital for rehabilitation services, will now have to travel outside of Greenwood to continue receiving care.
“If we have to drive to Jackson, we’ll drive to Jackson,” Brown said. Mississippi’s capital city is over 90 miles from Greenwood.
Brown lost a race for state senate for the Senate District 24 seat last year to Sen. Justin Pope. She emphasized access to health care as a key issue during her campaign.
Faye Roye, who worked at the Greenwood hospital on and off for 21 years, spent her last day as a physical therapist assistant at the outpatient rehabilitation clinic on April 28. She said during her time working there, the clinic was always busy treating patients.
Her first concern upon learning she would lose her job was whether her patients would be able to find transportation to new clinics or providers that accept their insurance. Roye added that she is especially worried pediatric patients will have difficulty continuing treatment.
“I know the faces of these children, and it really bothers me,” Roye said.
Greenwood Leflore Hospital is not the only Mississippi hospital facing financial instability. Over half of rural hospitals in the state are at risk of closing, according to a recent report from the Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform.
Connecting to healthcare in rural communities
The crisis facing Mississippi’s rural hospitals has emerged as a key issue in the U.S. Senate race between Republican incumbent Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith and Democratic challenger Scott Colom. Colom currently serves as the elected district attorney for the state’s 16th circuit district, which includes Lowndes, Clay, Noxubee and Oktibbeha counties.
Speaking Wednesday under cloudy skies in a parking lot across from Greenwood Leflore Hospital, Colom said the facility’s precarious financial situation offers a glimpse into the challenges other rural hospitals could face following changes tied to the federal One Big Beautiful Bill Act that President Donald Trump signed into law last July. Mississippi’s hospitals are expected to lose roughly $160 million a year as a result of the law.
Colom said that while Greenwood hospital’s financial troubles predated the new federal law, they will worsen if it is not reversed. He pointed to Hyde-Smith’s vote in support of the legislation.
“She may not have caused the crisis at this point at Greenwood, but she helped make it worse by supporting a bill that cut Medicaid,” Colom said.
Jake Monssen, Hyde-Smith’s campaign manager, said in a statement to Mississippi Today Colom is distorting facts to capitalize politically on an issue he does not understand.
Hyde-Smith “has made improving rural healthcare a priority since she was first elected, and she will continue to do so,” Monssen said, pointing to the senator’s support for Greenwood Leflore’s acceptance into a federal program that allows selected hospitals to be reimbursed based on actual costs for inpatient care instead of a fixed amount.
Monssen also highlighted the $50 billion federal Rural Health Transformation Program, an effort designed to offset the disproportionate impact already-struggling rural hospitals are expected to face as a result of spending cuts Congress passed last summer. Mississippi was awarded nearly $206 million in the first year of the program in December.
For Jacquelyn Sandifer-Rhodes, the recent clinic closures at Greenwood Leflore Hospital represent yet another reduction of healthcare access in a series of losses for the community.
“We just have a shell of a hospital,” the Greenwood resident said.
After the labor and delivery unit was shuttered, Sandifer-Rhodes said her nephew was born unexpectedly at Greenwood Leflore Hospital. She said the new mother then had to bring a car seat so she and her newborn could be transferred to UMMC Grenada for postnatal care.
This is not the first time Greenwood Leflore Hospital and UMMC have discussed a possible partnership. The hospitals entered into discussions about a possible partnership in 2022, but negotiations fell apart.
Mississippi Today previously reported the hospital and its owners signed a letter of intent in February to discuss a possible transaction in which the hospital would contribute all land, facilities, assets and operations to UMMC, the state’s only academic medical center.
Brown said she is concerned about the lack of transparency from hospital and local leaders surrounding the facility’s future. While she believes UMMC will provide excellent patient care, she worries that donating the hospital to the state’s only academic medical center, and the resulting loss of city and county ownership, will mean decisions about the hospital will be made in Jackson without input from Greenwood residents.
“It’s our hospital,” Brown said. “But when you lose ownership, with ownership goes your voice in what’s happening and the decisions that will be made.”
Beyond the community’s immediate concerns over the possible closure of Greenwood’s hospital, Evans and her household face more enduring challenges after she was laid off from the healthcare administrative job she held for decades.
Her husband fell ill in October. And now, her family no longer has health insurance.
This article was originally published by Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Source: Original Article
