Lieutenant Governor Gilbert Hosemann issued the following statement.
Four bills pending in Senate committees are aimed at helping stabilize hospitals and growing the healthcare workforce in Mississippi. Chief among them is Senate Bill 2372, authored by Senator Kevin Blackwell, which creates a program to provide $80 million in grants to hospitals based on number of licensed beds and care.
The legislation also requires recipient hospitals to submit a report detailing their patient census, medical services offered, and other information to the Department of Health to allow the state and healthcare facilities to better plan for the future of the industry.
In other bills, Senator Joey Fillingane is proposing long-term solutions for the structure of community hospitals and Senators David Parker and Rita Parks are addressing healthcare workforce shortages.
“Mississippians should have access to affordable, quality healthcare, and our hospitals across the state are a critical part of this network,” Lt. Governor Delbert Hosemann said. “The proposed funding is short-term, but these bills also are the beginning of a thoughtful, candid conversation about the delivery of healthcare in our state.”
Aside from the stabilization grant program, other legislation includes:
- Senate Bill 2373: A hospital nurse loan repayment program awarding new nurses who agree to work in a Mississippi hospital up to $6,000 each year for three years (total of $18,000) toward any outstanding loan debt.
- Senate Bill 2371: A grant for community college nursing and allied health programs. Community college recipients which have waitlists may use funds on equipment, infrastructure, curricula, or other expenses geared toward increasing capacity in nursing or allied health training programs.
- Senate Bill 2371: A hospital residency and fellowship grant providing start-up costs to create new or add capacity in existing programs in medical or surgical specialty areas at Mississippi hospitals. Physicians and surgeons who serve their residency or fellowship in the state are much more likely to remain here after the program concludes. Hospitals may use funds on equipment, infrastructure, curricula, or other initial expenses.
- Senate Bill 2323: Legislation allowing community hospitals to collaborate and consolidate facilities and services with non-profit or other similar entities.
For more information about Lt. Governor Delbert Hosemann, visit www.ltgovhosemann.ms.gov.
43 comments:
Given the shifting demographics this seems futile.
They might as well have government subsidies to bring back Model T dealerships alongside the modern, successful and current outlets that are meeting current demand.
Kicking the can down the road political pandering BAILOUT. Throwing money at population loss.
These bills should include a process for winnowing down the number of hospitals in regions with drastic population declines. You can't just prop them up by doling out cash without considering utilization. The money will simply run out and the issue becomes a crisis again in short order. Some areas of Mississippi are going to have to accept driving distances instead of having a hospital just down the street. In fact, a lot of people are already driving to get their hospital care, believing bigger is better, and that only adds to the problems faced by small, rural hospitals.
Democrat Hosemann giving away money to hospitals that will not survive the emptying of rural America being stimulated, exacerbated and promoted by Democrats nationally.
No legislation to get rid of CON means this is not a serious effort.
Everything looks fantastic and even idyllic way out in the boondocks .... until one considers the inconveniences of travel distances, lack of public services (law enforcement, fire protection, inadequate infrastructure such as drinking water, sanitary sewer, public roads, etc.), under-resourced public schools, lack of professional services/talent, inadequate health care. And then one gets old and the challenges of poor health arise quickly.
For-profit Urgent Care clinics staffed by PRNs can handle 90% of the needs of these communities.
Most of these folks’ health problems are primarily self-inflicted.
Just like their lack of “financial illiteracy” is their fault as well.
Hosemann is a RINO.
I thought our "conservatives" in Mississippi were "free market" conservatives. Looks like more big government programs to put its thumb on the scale of a market to me.
So, back in 1950, or whenever, the Greenwood Hospital builds X beds. Now that there are just a fraction of the people living in that area, they don't need that many beds. And yet, we are going to give them a grant based on the number of beds? Get rid of CON and this problem will get rid of itself. Someone will come in with a triage/clinic that will pretty much put the Greenwood Hospital out of business.
10:21 AM
But enough about Jackson. Tell us about the rural living.
10:34 AM
There's nothing free market about the American hospital system.
https://www.jec.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/8e6dbf03-ca4a-44be-9de4-a100c43fb5c8/obamacare-chart-high-resolution.pdf
Judging by the comments, I can tell no one here works in healthcare, but especially not the CON commenters. Elimination of CON laws exacerbates the financial problems healthcare is facing. But keep touting free market and whatever sounds good to you and find out for yourself. Check out how well payment is going for those home health agencies and nursing homes...
This proposal is a start but not enough. Hosemann is not a RINO. He just doesn't completely stick his head in the sand.
It’s not just declining population in rural areas that is causing the problem. Hospitals are required to treat anyone who walks through the door many who are indigent with no form of medical insurance. This runs the cost up for everyone. As much as some of you hate the term, we need to increase Medicare coverage.
First, my tax dollars go to bail out a municipal water system where I do not reside and now to hospitals that are located no where near me.
It's fun being a taxpayer in MS
10:35 AM
You are spot on. Having the "grant" based on the number of beds certified, is a huge mistake. I believe Greenwood Leflore is accredited for excess of 200 beds. There is no way that this hospital could care for more than 25 to 30 patients given the staffing and the actual functioning rooms. This formula would be a huge waste of money.
@12:10 - Greenwood Leflore Hospital was licensed for 208 beds, but they just had MSDH lower that to only 35 beds.
As I read the proposed hospital grant legislation, GLH would receive $500,000 dollars, plus a pro-rata share of whatever is left over.
$500,000 is at best a half month's operating loss at GLH.
Also, the bill won't go into effect until July 2023, by which time GLH will have closed down, unless something unexpected happens.
So this bill isn't going to significantly help GLH at all.
John Pittman Hey
January 19, 2023 at 11:15 AM, touché.
11:53 you taxes dollars pay for nothing Mississippi is a debtor state. We folks in California are paying for the water and just about everything else. The few dollars you pay are used for your dismal roads and schools.
Expand Medicare, that what Louisiana did 7 years ago, it hasn’t broken the bank, no hospitals have closed and the folks are healthier.
@1:12
Imagine being such an absolute nobody in California that you lurk in the comments of a blog about the literal worst city in America!
Or perhaps you are just the typical delusional leftist!
Meanwhile, the "Elephant in the Room" - Medicaid expansion - goes completely unnoticed. Shame on the racist Republicans. The Speaker won't stand for anything associated with an African American President, even though the State Economist says Mississippi would make money from Medicaid expansion, and provide healthcare to more than a quarter million Mississippians.
@10:34
There is no free market in Mississippi. Have you ever tried to buy raw cow's milk from your local MS dairy farmer? But,, you can buy raw goat's milk. Wonder who greased whose wheels to get that special carve out?
"There is no such thing as a free lunch", Milton Friedman. Morons!
@1:35pm
Medicaid uses Fed taxes at beginning, then cynically takes proportionately more from the State coffers in later years.
Meanwhile, docs hate Medicaid because they lose money on its insureds. Better to fix MS education with choice and vouchers and attract more free enterprise to MS, then prosperity can enable more to buy private group insurance.
Is Bill Dees racism accusation based in any fact?
I know facts don't matter to most these days, but I am old school and still prefer to deal in them rather than emotional exploitation with the well used, favorite Dem Card in the deck.
This is nothing but a well-coordinated effort for Oxford/IHL to have a monopoly over the hospital system. It is not free market. Hosemann is a political opportunist and RINO. Once he has shepherded the consolidation of authority over the hospitals throughout the state, I'll bet anyone a sawbuck that Medicaid expansion will suddenly be popular and PASS with flying colors. Oxford/IHL will make out like bandits just as planned.
Connect the dots people...
I work at a large hospital in MS. Many if not most simply do not deserve to be bailed out by the state. Mine on hospital is terribly managed and everyone realizes that. There must be a better solution than to give gobs of money to these administrators which have done a piss poor job here recently.
This is akin to city of Jackson and Baby Chok getting bailed out by Feds.
@1:15 - ok, you had me until that 'folks are healthier' bit. That's a good one.
80 million in a grant pool will last no longer than a fart in a whirlwind. And spread among the suffering hospitals, the total pool wound not fund the lot of them for 13 days.
But Delbert (who just happens to still be pictured over in the right column of this page), gets a bit more free campaign space. And this ain't even Supertalk.
The whole medical system inis broken thanks to - yes, you guessed it, politicians from both parties who had no idea what a mess they were creating and have absolutely no inkling of how to even begin to address the solution. This includes all federal, state and local politicos - I hope everyone of you is pissed by this statement, so offer a workable solution. If you take the Dem's $170 million and Delbert's $80 million and divide it by the number of hospitals, all they are doing is kicking the can down the road. Prove me wrong.
$80 million in grants would have a negligible impact on a multi billion dollar problem. The Greenwood hospital loses some $2 million or so a month and some of the other hospital have similar levels of financial losses.
One TV station tonight talked about Greenwood closing soon.
Then Greenville.
What will be left in the Delta?
Take me to Ruleville.😂😂
Health care has evolved from the family doctor with his black bag who made house calls, to physicians and administrators who went into medicine to get rich.
10:21 remarks as follows: "...until one considers the inconveniences of travel distances, lack of public services (law enforcement, fire protection, inadequate infrastructure such as drinking water, sanitary sewer, public roads, etc.), under-resourced public schools, lack of professional services/talent, inadequate health care."
No denying the Delta is, in some respects, for a particular demographic, a poverty-stricken region that's dependent on transfer payments: however, in which century 10:21 mired in? Every Delta town has a police force and county sheriff's office. Every Delta town has drinking water and sewer. Every public school is, by law, equipped to achieve it's intended purpose. There are public roads that are the responsibility of the state highway department and each area either has a functioning municipal or volunteer fire department.
I lived in the middle of the Delta 40 years ago when the feds granted the town of Metcalf (north of Greenville) with money to overall and build a new water and sewer system. And the same was true of Tunica, which we use to refer to as Sugar Ditch. Federal grant monies have put these systems in place wherever needed.
Where in the 18 Delta and part Delta Counties are there no public roads, no drinking water, lack of a police force, fire protection and under-resourced public schools? Again, in which century is 10:21 stuck?
I have no idea what 10:21 means by professional services/talent.
3:20 - sorry to be a downer, but I don't think education is going to ultimately fix healthcare when generations have been taught to stay at home and rely on the government for everything (and do better than the working man while at it).
There is a reason people are moving out of Mississippi and fewer people are relocating here. Access to decent healthcare is one. One of the many problems that need “fixing” that requires more than a bandaid approach. This hospital/healthcare crisis (and it is one) has been in the making for a decade. The politicians know this. The hospital administrators know this. The state via UMMC has tried to “fix” it and failed. Unfortunately, the closures are going to happen and people will suffer. There isn’t easy answer or remedy to this situation. We can all be grateful that we no longer need a prescription to buy Sudafed OTC though. One small win for the people.
“I have no idea what 10:21 means by professional services/talent”, they're maybe talking about the new, no tell motel, of the sort mentioned in another article on the website.
BUT 11:37 - According to Delbert, Gunn and Tate...with a new flag and removing a statue or two plus striking a blow for income tax elimination, the state will be inundated with new industry and people relocating here.
7:12
Ever heard of amazon ? The flag is dead and isn’t coming back.
Delbert's $80 million band-aid will do nothing but give him a stump from which he can claim to be addressing the problem.
The only bill listed above that could actually help solve the 'rural hospital problem' is SB 2253 - 'allowing' these left-over Hill Burton facilities to consolidate facilities and services.
Most every one of the 'failing' rural hospitals is a public (county-owned, generally) building that was constructed in the 50s-60s at a time when they actually served a medical need. But hospitals no longer serve the same purpose; surguries are most often done in ambulatory surgical units and the patients don't end up spending multiple nights in a 'hospital bed'.
These rural hospitals are mostly triage facilities - treat the patient and transfer them to a larger, better staffed, facility. Many have no patients spending the night in a hospital bed more nights than not.
The solution is not to piss away $80 million or $800 million (don't care if it is ARPA money so it is not considered to be real by the legislative 'leaders') in grants to pretend like we are doing something during this election year. It is to acknowledge that not every community needs to maintain a hospital; and that these public owned facilities were created to be "health care facilities" rather than economic drivers or employers.
Yes, all those that are clamoring for "expanding Medicaid" never argue that the reason is to improve health care but rather to keep the jobs in these small communities; to pump federal dollars into them; and to keep the stand-along facility on life support for just a little while longer.
Merging these antiques with other facilities - maintaining a clinic and emergency facility in most communities - and acknowledging that the old model has been replaced with the changes in technology just as everything else has been.
When Delbert and the Senate drop a plan like this, Gunn and the House's MO has been to either not do anything at all on the subject or try to one up Delbert and the Senate significantly. Have Gunn and his lieutenants had a press conference yet to provide their bigger and better plan to save hospitals, or will there be no House leadership press conference and they do nothing on this issue?
They need to end the certificate of need bullshit or at least instead take “licensed” beds from hospitals that don’t really use what they are approved approve for. For example Baptist is licensed for over 600 beds but can only staff a little over 400. Saint Dominic’s and Central are doing the same. Probably ummc too.
The certificate of need process is abjectly terrible and has hurt access to care for Mississippians.
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