Thursday, July 20, 2023, 5:15 pm
News Flash Archive
Greenwood is losing two key physicians, with the announcements coming in the past month.
Greenwood has seen a steady exodus of doctors, the trend being driven by the economic collapse of the Greenwood Leflore Hospital. To see a review of our previous reporting on this matter, read here: Greenwood losing four more doctors
Dr. Michael Boler, an internal medicine physician who has practiced for 37 years, abruptly closed his clinic about three weeks ago.
A sign on his clinic door stated:
Due to an illness, Dr. Boler is taking an early retirement. We will miss all of our patients.
Dr. Boler is a beloved physician who treated many families during his time in Greenwood.
Also, a hospital physician, Dr. Abhash Thakur, announced in a letter to his patients on June 26, that he too is quitting medical practice in Greenwood:
I am writing to inform you that I have decided to discontinue my cardiology practice in Greenwood. As a result, cardiology services will no longer be available at Leflore Specialty Clinic effective August 17, 2023.
Thakur then added:
However, Greenwood Leflore Hospital will continue to support the cardiology needs of its patients.
Dr. Thakur has been a workhorse doctor at GLH. In addition to his cardiology practice, he has been running the ICU and acting as a hospitalist, who manages patients that have been admitted to the hospital.
Thakur concluded his letter:
It has been my honor and privilege to know and care for you and your families during the 18 years I have been in Greenwood. I wish you all the best in the coming years.
Thakur is the only cardiologist in Greenwood.
Although there has been talk of reopening the ICU, which was closed last August, once Thakur leaves, there are at present no cardiologists or pulmonologists available to staff it locally.
Yesterday afternoon, the Leflore County Board of Supervisors convened a meeting at the court house with Greenwood city leaders, the hospital trustees and administration, and others to discuss the financial situation at the hospital, which is bleak.
Several key points were made:
1. For Medicare and Medicaid patients, which make up 75% of the patient load, the hospital loses money, because the payment schedule does not meet the expenses of providing the services. Because of this, higher service volumes, in a certain sense, just make matters worse. Only upping services to private pay patients with good insurance can keep the hospital afloat.
2. As the hospital has had to discontinue unprofitable service lines (ICU, pulmonology, pediatrics, OB/GYN, newborn deliveries, and some wound care services), revenue has predictably dropped, along with costs.
3. The hospital simply could not afford to pay two OB doctors (the minimum required), and specialized newborn nursing staff, to deliver an average of only two babies a day at GLH.
4. Interim CEO Gary Marchand made it very clear, that had the hospital not closed the ICU, stopped newborn deliveries, and made very hard choices regarding wound care, the hospital would have been forced to shut down completely months before now.
5. Hospital administration made it clear that without critical access designation by CMS, the hospital cannot survive. Critical access designation would entitle the hospital to more generous Medicare payments than it is now receiving.
6. Discontinuing pediatrics and OB/GYN, which UMMC picked up, was a net positive financial move for GLH. It allows those patients to continue to receive most of their care in Greenwood at the UMMC clinics.
7. Supervisor Sam Abraham pressed the other members present to provide him with more certainty whether the hospital will be granted critical access designation by CMS. He is concerned that the county will spend the $10 million to keep GLH afloat, only to find out once the money is gone that the critical access designation will not be granted by CMS.
8. Nobody could assure Abraham that the critical access designation would be forthcoming, or that the hospital will survive. Marchand described how its consultants gave radically different estimates of the financial impact of receiving the designation, and also predicted that GLH will not receive word on the designation until sometime between October 2023 and February 2024.
9. The $10 million loan that the county has obtained will probably all be gone by the end of the year. The loan is being used to keep the hospital afloat. Paying for the loan will most likely mean at least a 3.5 mill property tax increase for the next decade.
10. Abraham claimed that he is not receiving regular reports from the consultant, Mr. Samuel Odle, that the county hired and is paying $12,000 per month. The consultant is supposed to be shepherding the critical access designation through the federal bureaucracy.
11. Supervisor Eric Mitchell stated his view that the hospital was suffering from "bad business decisions." He claimed that some physicians have contracts that pay a flat salary no matter how many patients they see. He also criticized the hospital for paying Gary Marchand to be the "second CEO" once it hired Jason Studley as CEO. Marchand explained that he was not CEO during Studley's time, but was retained as a consultant to help analyze the service lines and whether they were sustainable or not. Once Studley resigned, the board elevated Marchand as Interim CEO, which he remains today.
Overall, the meeting did not produce any decisions or a clear direction forward.
The matter of the dispute between the city and the county over the reappointment of Greenwood Fire Chief Marcus Banks to the hospital board was not directly addressed. The county wants to replace him, so they can have a "new direction" in hospital leadership, while the city insists that he be reappointed.
To read our previous reporting on the board appointment dispute, see here: Sparks fly at city council meeting discussion of hospital board reappointment
To view yesterday's meeting, see here: Leflore County Board of Supervisors Meeting re: Greenwood Leflore Hospital's future, July 19, 2023
To review our reporting on GLH and its financial woes, please see here: Index of Greenwood Leflore Hospital news articles
John Pittman Hey
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