Once upon a time, a hospital decided to open in Northeast Jackson without jumping through all the hoops even though the powers at be tried to help it along. The result? The hospital never dreamed it would be forced to close after spending millions of dollars and seeing over 20,000 patients but closed it was. Sound familiar? Read on.
22 comments:
If my memory serves me, the folks building the hospital did not have an approved Certificate of Need prior to construction.
Reddix Medical Group - future felon.
When does he get out of prison? His mansion in Woodlea needs some attention.
During that time I worked at a Jackson law firm that fought tooth and nail to oppose the new hospital. There was no legitimate reason to oppose it -- certainly not from the perspective of anyone who favors free markets and free enterprise and who favors better access to quality healthcare. The new hospital was going to provide very good healthcare services in a new state of the art facility centrally located in the middle of our community. The war against the new hospital was nothing more than a turf battle in which an existing healthcare provider (firm's client) used the Certificate of Need laws as a sword to destroy any threat of competition. The establishment won. The new hospital was destroyed. Everyone at the firm high fived and relished in the victory and bragged to themselves how much "good" they had done, and earned very large fees. It was shameful.
The result was that competition was eliminated. The healthcare "powers that be" remained in power and in control of local healthcare. Our community has since suffered from a lack of competition and lack of access to healthcare and unreasonably high prices.
The CON process is terrible for Mississippi citizens. It perpetuates a lack of access to healthcare, very little competition, and results in very high prices for healthcare services. The CON process exists to build and maintain a very deep and wide moat around the turf of existing healthcare providers so that all others are kept out. In the CON process NO ONE outside of existing healthcare providers gets involved to oppose new healthcare facilities.
The CON process should be eliminated. Allow for the free market to decide the winners and losers in healthcare -- not the already established hospitals and their hired guns!
And meanwhile there's still not a proper hospital between Lakeland Drive and Canton.
Certificate of Need needs to be put out to pasture.
Oooooommmmmmahhhhh my elbow hurt
"The CON process is terrible for Mississippi citizens. It perpetuates a lack of access to healthcare, very little competition, and results in very high prices for healthcare services. The CON process exists to build and maintain a very deep and wide moat around the turf of existing healthcare providers so that all others are kept out. In the CON process NO ONE outside of existing healthcare providers gets involved to oppose new healthcare facilities.
The CON process should be eliminated. Allow for the free market to decide the winners and losers in healthcare -- not the already established hospitals and their hired guns!"
It's why I don't call any Republican in Mississippi "conservative." As long as they support CON laws and the State being in control of the sale of liquor and wine, they are not "conservative." It would behoove Mississippi voters to learn how they are being bamboozled by these so called conservatives they keep voting for.
10:37, you certainly are entitled to your opinion about the value, good or bad, of the CON but you fail to include in your thoughts that the hospital was built ignoring the law that was on the books at the time.
As a lawyer it sounds as if you, or at least your firm, did your job in defending your client so evidently you are (or at least were at the time) a respectable lawyer that was willing to take money from a client you didn't believe in.
But the point of this story was that one can't ignore existing statutes and think they can spend money and get approval after the fact - which is what Richards along with the Mayor are attempting to do in the garbage fiasco. There was a CON and the hospital lost their legal battle. There are statutes about how a city awards a contract but the Mayor and his cohart have decided to ignore them and try to bully their way into existence (as your hospital client tried to do.)
In this case the Mayor and Richards will suffer the same demise as your hospital client.
10:50 - great point. There is a twenty mile stretch (actually only about 18 miles) without a hospital. So the longest distance along that route that someone is from a hospital is nine miles. Lets do the same math between Highway 80 and Magee. Or Airport Road and Forest. Or Airport Road and Carthage. Much further distances - same would be true all over the state, both in rural populations and in other high density populations.
And we have many hospitals in the state who's average daily occupancy rate is less than five beds; several with an average daily occupancy of less than two. But ---- can't close those poor rural hospitals, they are too important of a job producer in those small towns.
What do you want - a pig in every pot and a hospital on every corner?
Unknown at 10:28. Read the articles. The CON WAS approved!
2:38, maybe what he wants is a state not ranked dead last in healthcare.
We aren't bottom ranked because we have either too many hospitals or too many doctors.
We are ranked dead last because we have too many lawyers.
Especially the ones who prevent Medicaid expansion and the ones, as fools, trying to eliminate the income tax.
That was the ever benevolent Dominican Sisters at work…..
I miss the horse stables being there.
@ 2:33, I didn't work on the matter, left the firm not long afterward, and at my pay grade I can assure you I didn't share in the bounty.
You are incorrect regarding CON approval as it had previously been awarded. The establishment gatekeepers then appealed the CON award. This is a perfect example as to why the CON process is so bad for Mississippi, yet here we lie 27 years later with the same anticompetitive laws in place.
The point is that the CON process is very harmful to Mississippi residents, and it was weaponized by the establishment of healthcare providers (as it always is) to destroy what would have otherwise been a much needed and valuable healthcare asset to our Jackson community.
Our legislature should wake up and repeal the CON laws so that the free market can prevail in healthcare to deliver better access, better services, and better prices.
Bounty hunters being hired to use bad CON laws to hunt and destroy good and useful healthcare providers is neither a "good" nor "just" thing for society -- but as far as I knew they slept soundly at night.
And regarding Chok and the City Council waste dispute, please, there are dozens of other threads on JJ to pontificate about that garbage . . . .
2:38, 10:50 here....all I'm saying is there's a big hospital in South Jackson, one in Flowood, one in Brandon, three in midtown Jackson, and nothing else north of there until you get to Canton, in the area of the Metro that has seen THE MOST growth in the past 25 years. It defies reason. It may only be nine miles from Madison to Lakeland if you're a bird, but on streets and highways that can be a 25-30 minute drive, which is a long time in an emergency.
3:02 You are dead last because you allow the backward entity called the University of Mississippi to continue to have a monopoly on turning out lawyers and doctors.
There is Merit Health, which has an er I believe, by the Nissan plant.
Humorous posts here. MS is last because Ole Miss produces doctors and lawyers in a monopoly. St. D and Baptist fought and won and they were wrong.
First, Ole Miss is one of two law schools. No monopoly.
Second, a small state cannot afford two medical schools.
Third, I’ve disliked the CON process since 1975 but since it’s the law all hospitals must comply, including St. D and Baptist which objected. And won.
By the way, I agree the conservative label in MS means nothing.
RMQ
8:14 is correct about Merit Health north of Madison (maybe now in Gluckstadt).
7:56 doesn't understand how medical education works. There is now a medical school (osteopathy school) in Hattiesburg with its own residency program. Similarly, no one is preventing physicians from other states from moving to Mississippi and moving their practice here; apparently the work environment, coupled with low reimbursement is not too appealing. UM does not have a monopoly on law school either, as graduates from Mississippi College's law school will be happy to tell you.
There soon will be a new hospital off 55 in Ridgeland behind the Colony Park Washington monumemt obelisk cell tower
Then it became death’s waiting room. Nothing but patients on vents from botched lap-band surgeries.
It appears to be more light in the window for the relaxing of CON law interpretation in MS. CON laws not only apply to new hospitals being built, but also to high priced medical equipment like image guided OR suites and cath labs. These are just a couple of examples. There are several examples of outpatient cath labs and radiology centers springing up around the state where the CON was relaxed and project allowed to proceed. See Hattiesburg and even in Jackson area.
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