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Donna Hopkins, RN, with the Emergency Room at Alliance Hospital, has been with Dr. Williams since 1998. Dr. Gregory Stallworth is the ER director, Hopkins said.

Alliance Hospital restructuring

Alliance Healthcare Hospital is restructuring towards a new rural hospital designation - the Rural Emergency Hospital (REH). This new hospital concept was put in place by Congress in January 2023 requires CMS/Medicare (Center for Medicare Services) approval. This new designation will change the way a lot of rural hospitals will serve its patients, according to Dr. Kenneth Williams.

He said Alliance Hospital is restructuring by choice as are many other small rural hospitals in Mississippi

Alliance will transition to all out-patient and emergency room services, he said.

“Most rural hospitals are losing money,” he said. “This is a financial decision. The hospital could not survive the way we were operating.

“It’s not just this community, it is many rural communities nationwide. This is the real deal.

“As a result of the restructuring, all current inpatients will be discharged when medically appropriate, and no new inpatients will be admitted to our floors.”

Williams said the hospital will not need all the personnel it currently employs, since inpatient care is not permitted under REH rules.

“Alliance notified the Mississippi Department of Employment Security and the Department of Labor, and they brought in their rapid response team who were on site today (Monday). Other entities (Three Rivers, TANF and its rapid response team, Department of Labor, Northwest Community College, local Nursing Homes, etc.) were on site also with job retraining descriptions and job offerings,” Williams said.

He said the restructuring was necessitated by several things and all them financial:

• the Medicare Advantage Plan has “truly hurt the financial status of hospitals,” Williams said. “The reimbursement for our professional services is so low now and we are out of network with many of them, so it has hurt hospitals, especially ours.”

• the lack of support from the current ambulance service contracted by Marshall County. “They don’t transport necessary patients to our facility nor transfer to other facilities of higher care when requested as they should,” Williams said.

“We have been getting less than 10 percent of the ambulance runs from inside of Marshall County with the current county supported Ambulance company, which is supported financially very well by the Marshall County Board of Supervisors and it taxpayers.”

• the State is not participating in the Medicaid Expansion Program.

• staffing and supply costs have hurt small local rural hospitals. “The current nursing salaries are not sustainable with the current reimbursement model,” Williams said.

“Contract and travel-supported nursing companies has hurt the availability of area nurses and the cost to pay nurses has escalated tremendously since the COVID pandemic. The salary demands are off the charts,” Williams said.

Right now, one-third of Mississippi’s small rural hospitals are at risk of closure and one-half of the state’s rural hospitals are at risk of closure in the next two to three years, Williams said.

“Medicare Advantage Plans” are just private insurance companies who are profiteering from Medicare and Medicare-eligible patients,” Williams said. “They will make offers to get people to sign up by ways people would not realize - such as making extra financial promises to potential customers. This is accomplished by paying healthcare providers way below Medicare rates or not paying at all through a process called ‘Prior-Approval.’ For example, one recent contract presented to us asked if we will accept 20% of the Medicare rate already approved for an X-Ray or Lab work done in my office. For reference, the Medicare rate used to be the bottom (lowest) of rates accepted for any visit or procedure.

In short, the Medicare Advantage System is hurting providers.”

Williams made it clear that Alliance Hospital is ‘not closing,’ however, it is ‘restructuring’ to survive in this new healthcare climate and to maintain future viability.

“I’m communicating with the state as we are moving through this process,” he said. “We are trying to do this the proper way for this community and our employees, and it definitely hurts to have to make this type of decision!!!”

Holly Springs South Reporter

P.O. Box 278
Holly Springs, MS 38635
PH: (662) 252-4261
FAX: (662) 252-3388
www.southreporter.com