Leflore County’s Board of Supervisors, less than two weeks after denying a million-dollar request for emergency funding from Greenwood Leflore Hospital, has voted to give the hospital $3 million.
The unanimous vote came Monday after about 1½ hours of sometimes conflicting presentations by physicians and hospital board members about the hospital’s precarious financial condition and what led to it.
Reginald Moore, president of the Board of Supervisors, said afterward he made the motion to provide the emergency funding to relieve the anxiety of the nearly 600 employees who work there. Dozens of hospital employees were among the crowd that filled the courthouse boardroom and flowed out of its two entrances.
“We want (the employees) focused on patient care, and not on whether or not they have a job or whether or not they’re going to get a paycheck,” Moore said.
Reginald Moore, president of the Leflore County Board of Supervisors, addresses the audience at the start of Monday's meeting regarding the financially endangered Greenwood Leflore Hospital. (By Tim Kalich)
The money will be drawn from a $10 million line of credit that the county secured earlier this year to provide stopgap funding to the hospital while it continues to pursue designation as a critical access hospital.
The Board of Supervisors approved the first two draws, totaling $4.3 million, but on Sept. 13 voted 3-2 to reject the hospital’s request for an additional $1 million.
District 4 Supervisor Eric Mitchell, along with Moore and District 5’s Robert Collins, voted against that draw request, citing their concerns with the hospital administration and skepticism about whether the critical-access designation would be approved. On Monday, Mitchell said that earlier vote did not indicate any lack of support by the county board for the hospital, which Leflore County jointly owns with the city of Greenwood.
“A vote delayed is not a vote denied,” Mitchell said. “It was always our intention to keep the hospital open by any means necessary.”
The county board anticipates that the $3 million draw approved on Monday should provide enough stopgap funding to get the hospital through December, by when it is hoping to hear a final decision on its application with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
Last month, the CMS regional office turned down Greenwood Leflore’s application because of a regulation that stipulates a critical access hospital must be located more than 35 miles from another hospital (or 15 miles if the distance is covered by two-lane roads). There are at least three hospitals within 35 miles of the Greenwood hospital.
The rejection has been appealed to the federal CMS office in Washington, seeking a waiver to the 35-mile rule. The hospital administration has said that the designation is essential to the hospital’s survival.
The money from the line of credit “is to be a last resort,” said Moore, “but we also must string it out as far as we possibly can, not knowing what the future holds. We still want to have funds to operate the hospital in 2024.”
Before Monday’s vote, two of the hospital board members gave the supervisors conflicting accounts of the current financial condition of the hospital. Emma Bell, the board’s secretary and a member of its Finance Committee, said she had been told by Dawne Holmes, the hospital’s chief financial officer, that the hospital would have enough money, even without an additional draw on the line of credit, to make it through the end of the year.
Marcus Banks, however, said Bell was mistaken. He said he heard at the most recent board meeting, held last week, that the hospital only would have enough money to cover the last payroll in September, which goes out Friday. After that, Banks said, without additional funding from the county, the hospital might have to give its employees 60 days' notice, as required by federal law, of its imminent closure.
Even without the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act being triggered, the previous indecision on the Board of Supervisors had been making a lot of employees nervous, said Dr. Marsha Lucas, a pathologist who oversees the hospital’s lab as an independent contractor and whose surgeon husband, Dr. John F. Lucas III, is a hospital employee.
“People come up to me and say, ‘Maybe I should start looking for another job,’” said Marsha Lucas, after listening to the presentations. “John and I are thinking about where we will go.”
Because of the overflow crowd, Lora Evans, director of admissions and managed care contracts at the hospital, had to strain from one of the boardroom’s doorways to listen to what was transpiring inside for a good part of the meeting. After the vote, she said she was relieved.
“I’ve got friends that are out of state that I graduated and went to high school with that call me and want to make sure that we still have a hospital. So that’s why I support Greenwood Leflore Hospital, not just for my job. If I have to be one to go, I still live in this community. I know that we need a hospital.”
Banks said he believes news coverage of the supervisors’ previous action and the unhappy feedback they were receiving from hospital employees resulted in Monday’s reversal on additional emergency funding.
“I think this is something that should have been done a little while ago, but better late than never,” he said.
- Contact Tim Kalich at 662-581-7243 or tkalich@gwcommonwealth.com.
Marcus Banks, a member of the Greenwood Leflore Hospital Board, makes a point during his presentation Monday to the Leflore County Board of Supervisors. (By Tim Kalich)
