Mississippi Delta hospitals battle monetary components to outlive
In all, 26 folks died within the storms, together with one in all Sharkey-Issaquena’s staff.
“With out the hospital being there that night time, I feel the demise toll and struggling would have been a lot worse than what it was,” hospital administrator Jerry Keever mentioned.
However rural hospitals like Sharkey-Issaquena are more and more endangered, as poverty, declining populations and dwindling inpatient income chip away at income. In 2020, a document 18 had been both closed or transformed to outpatient services, in keeping with the College of North Carolina’s Cecil G. Sheps Heart for Well being Providers Analysis.
The federal assist that Congress appropriated in the course of the COVID-19 pandemic appeared to sluggish the speed of closures, with simply 10 hospitals closed or transformed between 2021 and 2022. However now some are in worse form than earlier than, as they battle with ongoing employees shortages and rising prices.
That is the primary story in a collection inspecting the monetary state of rural hospitals within the wake of the pandemic, and the way communities are grappling with the longer term now that federal assist is operating dry.
