That is one expensive bandage the Coahoma County Board of Supervisors applied earlier this week to that looming massive cut to the community in the form of the closing of the Northwest Mississippi Regional Medical Center.
But had the county board not acted and pledged some $2.4 million to make sure the hospital’s 484 employees are paid over the next four weeks, we could have been looking at the death of the local hospital and the subsequent economic fallout.
“They were gonna close,” Paul Pearson, president of the Coahoma County board of supervisors, said Monday about Curae Health, the operator of the local hospital that declared bankruptcy on Aug. 24 and announced in October that they would possibly close by Dec. 10.
However, those projections must have come up short as Pearson said, “At midnight Sunday, it was over with. They just didn’t have the money to do it.”
He said the county could not take the risk of the temporary closing and that’s why the board of supervisors acted to approve funding the payroll for the next month.
“Everybody we talked to said, ‘If you close it for 24 hours, it will never open again,” Pearson said.
The money will come out of an approximate $38 million hospital reserve fund that is made up of the $30 million that the county received from Health Management Associates in 1996 when the company was awarded the initial operating lease.
Pearson admits $2.4 million is “a very huge chunk” and it is a concern among all the supervisors, but said the purpose of the reserve fund was for instances such as this.
“It’s a very expensive Band-Aid, but it bought us 30 days,” he said.
On Tuesday, the board of supervisors and Community Health Systems announced that the two are working together to continue operations at the Clarksdale hospital with an “ultimate goal of identifying a new buyer for the hospital.”
A tentative agreement was reached for a Community Health Systems affiliate, Clarksdale HMA, to take over operations of the hospital on Dec. 10, 2018, from Curae Health. Till that date, the county will be meeting the payroll obligations.
“They could have very easily told us, ‘We’ll see you in court,’” Pearson said of CHS. “They are willing to step in and honor the lease and operate the hospital. They’re going to meet the payroll, they’re going to get the supplies, they’re going to pay the light bill. And they’re going to operate the hospital for us for up to a year.”
During that time, Trilogy Healthcare Solutions will continue to advise the county board on the correct actions to take to right the ship. And that could bring about some changes.
“What was important to Coahoma County, as far as health care, in 1996 may not necessarily be the same thing now,” Pearson said. “We need to generate revenue. We’ve got to make this hospital profitable again. It’s got to be strong and sturdy for the employees.”
He believes that process will involve looking at what each person’s role is at the hospital. Pearson said he hasn’t heard of any staff departures and also feels that the current CEO, Joel Southern, will remain at the facility. And Pearson doesn’t feel that county supervisors should be involved in the hiring and firing of employees.
“I think that would be a huge mistake,” he said.
Possible scenarios could involve the county operating the hospital and Trilogy managing the facility, or agreeing to a new lease with some of the companies looking at the facility.
The key point, as Pearson says, is that the county is not under the gun, so to speak. They have up to a year to determine the new direction for the hospital.
“It’s unfortunate how we got here, but this is a great opportunity to get it right, once and for all,” Pearson said.
At this time last year, he said the county’s “hands were really tied.” There was a legitimate fear among county leaders that Community Health Systems could possibly close the facility.
“Curae was the only girl at the dance… well, I shouldn’t say that, but she was the only one that wanted to dance with us,” Pearson said. “They were the only company that came to us and said, ‘We’re gonna make it happen.’ They made a lot of promises. They said they could do it.”
Looking back a year later, he’s not sure if the county could have done anything differently.
“I think we did the best we could with what we had to work with,” Pearson said.
One thing that the county got right during its negotiations with Curae was in listening to County Attorney Tom Ross, who urged the supervisors to hold Community Health Systems responsible for the lease if Curae failed to meet its obligations.
“Tom really played a huge role in this,” Pearson said.
Ross should be commended for his foresight. Had it not been for his action, the board of supervisors would have had nothing to negotiate with when they recently met with CHS attorneys.
“It’s a piece of paper that would have been absolutely useless,” Pearson said.
And Pearson is right to point out that Community Health Systems could have contested the lease and kept the issue “tied up in court for two to three years.” He said while he believes the county would have eventually prevailed, they would have found themselves suddenly running a community hospital, which, as one can see from the payroll, not a cheap affair. Pearson had earlier estimated it takes $7,000 a minute to operate the Clarksdale hospital.
“CHS, by coming forward and doing this, is great,” Pearson said. “This is about the best you could get out of a really bad situation.”
There are still points to settle in regard to the lease. There is the question if whether CHS is responsible for paying the $500,000 annual lease payment due in December and there is also the matter of who pays the approximate $500,000 in property taxes on the facility.
Pearson said he believes “we will be able to negotiate something on that.”
For now, the county supervisors and community can catch its collective breath.But still, while the hospital remains alive and breathing, there’s still a lot of rehabilitation in its near future.
Michael Banks is the publisher of The Clarksdale Press Register. He can be reached by calling 662-627-2201 or emailing mbanks@pressregister.com.
