Rural hospitals fear health care overhaul won’t help them

From the Miami Herald:

The Peach County Regional Medical Center, a small, Cold War-era hospital in Fort Valley, Ga., 40 miles from the nearest trauma center in Macon, is in critical condition.

Medical specialists and surgeons — physicians who are hard to recruit to rural areas — often take one look at the hospital’s worn and soiled carpet and peeling wallpaper and decide to hang their shingles elsewhere.

The emergency room has only five beds, so when patients with serious injuries or illnesses are admitted other less critical patients must get out of bed and walk or are rolled to a nearby waiting room.

Most of those patients are uninsured and can pay little, if anything, toward their treatment, forcing the hospital to absorb the costs. When the hospital does receive payment, often from Medicare and Medicaid, the reimbursements are slow in coming and don’t fully cover treatments costs.

“You live lean and make hard choices every day,” said Nancy Peed, Peach County Regional’s CEO and administrator. “That’s why the carpet doesn’t look good, that’s why the wallpaper is old. When I have money I put it into health care, quality nurses and medicine. My chairs and waiting room may not look great and sometimes that’s a turn-off for people. But we give great quality health care.”

Physicians and hospital administrators at facilities in rural counties like Peach County are closely watching the health care debate now taking place in Washington.

Overhauling the system could offer a lifeline to hospitals, doctors and nurses that serve the nation’s small towns and agricultural communities, they say. But they also fear that Congress might not provide either enough money or the right incentives to allow rural hospitals to cover their costs and recruit talented medical professionals. That, they fear, will make it nearly impossible for smaller hospitals to remains in business.