I was born at Kings Daughter’s Hospital, Room 315 at 3:15 p.m., in Greenville, Miss., on Jan. 8, 1960.
Daddy was stationed at the Greenville Air Force Base and Momma was the Education Director at First Baptist Church.
My mother gave me the bill for my delivery recently. It was $150.00 and the bill was broken down like this: the hospital fee was $75, the doctor was $50, the room was $20 for three day, the bracelet they put on my wrist was $1, and there were a few other items. Momma pointed out she provided the labor free of charge.
Sixty-four years later a lot of things have changed in healthcare.
Today’s market
The average cost for childbirth is $18,865 and the average out of pocket cost for your average health insurance plan is $2,854. Those numbers jump to $26,280 for a Cesarean and your cost is $3,214. That’s the national average.
Strangely, the numbers in Mississippi are $6,545.41 with insurance and $11,211.17 without insurance. A C-section costs $9,695.69 with insurance and $15,107.17 without insurance.
Those numbers are cheaper in Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, Ohio, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, Utah, Vermont and West Virginia.
Do you see a pattern? I don’t.
Anyone who has medical bills will have to agree that what you pay for healthcare is as unique and different as you are.
It IS brain surgery
You’ve heard my joke: “If your newspaper breaks, give me a call and I can probably fix it.”
Hospitals and healthcare are a complex issue and yours truly is not the man for the job.
But as the father of four, with parents who need healthcare, I do recognize best practices and as a reporter I have studied the issue. I have learned a lot since I came to Clarksdale four short years ago.
COVID wrecked the way we do a lot of things and the impact it had on rural healthcare was devastating. Contract doctors and nurses could name their price. Hospitals were stretched to the snapping point by an influx of patients who had a disease with no standard method of treatment. And then the cost for everything a hospital used doubled and sometimes tripled in price.
Name any business that likes inflation, high labor costs and must dramatically re-train and reassess the way they do business.
It was during this time that Clarksdale’s hospital transferred management, not once, but three times.
New and improved
Clarksdale’s hospital, now called Northwest Mississippi Regional Medical Center (NMRMC), has come through that storm and they will admit the sky is still cloudy.
That is why I’ve watched legislation in Jackson that would create a cooperative of locally owned Delta hospitals that would work together to solve some of this regions healthcare problems. This multi-hospital group would recruit doctors, share services, see what works around here and tackle problems.
There is a story on Page 5 of your Clarksdale Press Register that explains the details of this proposal.
It talks about how the Delta Council is pitching this idea. And your Delta Council is made up of some of the smartest and most successful men in agriculture, insurance, commerce, politics and, yes, healthcare, in our region.
They realize the only people who really care about the Mississippi Delta are the people who live here. We can’t look to Washington or Jackson for our best interests. We have to solve this ourselves with the resources and ideas we have and that fit our culture and our people.
Is this “cooperative” the best thing for us? I don’t know.
I do know you can find the 74 page Senate Bill 2713 and six page House Bill 1639 on our website and I dare say nobody will read it.
I bet the members of the NMRMC Board of Director have read it. I bet they understand it better than you and I. I bet they are more committed to figuring out what is best for Clarksdale than your editor of four years.
Be informed
But the information is out there, healthcare is a major issue in the Delta and this community and we have got to get this right. I urge you to get informed.
This newspaper has reported before that your hospital came within 60-days of closing. This newspaper has tried to explain how our hospital was in bankruptcy court, taken over by Community Health Services (CHS), transferred to Delta Health Service (DHS) out of Greenville, and finally taken over by the county who owns our hospital and always has.
We need to use our hospital. We need to make local doctors our primary care physicians. We need to trust our people to make the best decisions. And we need to know what is going on at our hospital and with our healthcare.
We think it is obvious the future of Clarksdale and the health of this community are literally at stake.
Floyd Ingram is the Editor of your Clarksdale Press Register. At his age, he has aches and pains just like you. Call him at 662-627-2201 with you diagnosis of what this community needs to do.
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