Leroy Brooks remembers well the public furor that arose when Lowndes County supervisors voted to lease the county-owned hospital to Baptist Memorial Health Care Corporation.
Brooks, who represents District 4 on the Lowndes County Board of Supervisors, was one of two supervisors to vote against the lease agreement in 1993. The lease passed in a 3-2 vote, with former supervisors Johnny Mack McCrary, Dwight Colson and Walt Willis voting in favor. Former supervisor Murray Anthony voted with Brooks against the lease.
Every supervisor who voted in favor of the lease lost their seat in the next election.
“When election time came, the three guys that were incumbents, they got beaten real bad,” Brooks said. “It was because of the hospital issue. The community just was in opposition. They went on and leased it anyway, and then came the election.”
Today, Oktibbeha County faces a similar decision as supervisors weigh whether to proceed in seeking proposals to privatize the county-owned OCH Regional Medical Center. Supervisors earlier this year hired Tennessee-based Stroudwater and Associates to complete a hospital analysis — the first required legal step before the county can consider leasing or selling OCH. The analysis noted the need for more revenue to fund future growth at OCH. A sale could generate between $20 million and $60 million, Stroudwater’s report noted. Any proceeds from a deal would first have to be applied to OCH’s $24.8 million in the hospital’s outstanding debt obligations.
The report sparked fears that supervisors intend to sell the hospital and has generated fierce public blowback against the idea, including a barrage of criticism for Stroudwater not following generally-accepted accounting practices for the analysis.
An effort to gather 1,500 signatures is ongoing to block supervisors from making the decision and force the matter to a public vote. Ted Woodrell, a consultant supervisors hired to guide them through the process, recently advised supervisors to put the potential sale or lease of the hospital to a public referendum without need of a petition.
Meanwhile, the board of directors for the Greater Starkville Development Partnership — an organization which bolsters retail and economic development efforts in the city — has called upon supervisors to cease discussions about potentially privatizing OCH.
While OCH’s future remains unclear, Brooks acknowledged Lowndes County’s lease and ultimate $30 million sale of its hospital to Baptist in 2006 has worked out well for the county.
Brooks added, though, that Oktibbeha County supervisors today are virtually in a “no-win situation.”
“I would not want to be a supervisor that would have to cast that vote, because you’ve got strong opposition on both sides,” Brooks said. “The one thing I’ve learned politically is people will say they’ll support you and not go and vote for you. But people that are against you will definitely go and vote against you.”
OCH overview
OCH CEO Richard Hilton said he’d like to see the current process come to a close. He said the ongoing instability is harmful for the hospital in terms of staff recruitment and retention.
“If they’re constantly looking into our community and all they’re seeing is ‘Hospital is going to sale’ and the chatter that’s going with that, people might sit there and say ‘I don’t want to be involved with that,'” he said.
OCH has 96 available beds with 51 active physicians and 223 full-time equivalent nurses. The hospital offers services among 20 areas of health care, including emergency room, pulmonary services, rehabilitation, outpatient surgery, breast care and respiratory care. OCH also operates 10 clinics and provides a wide variety of health-focused programs.
Hilton said he is concerned that OCH’s capacity to continue providing its services might be negatively impacted if a sale or lease happens. However, he said it’s hard to know for certain because it would depend on the culture of whatever corporation or organization bought the hospital. He said factors, such as whether a company is for-profit or not-for-profit, can play in significantly.
“It’s whatever their objectives are,” he said. “For-profits, their objective is bottom line orientation. They’re going to use the buzz words ‘we want to provide good care.’ But they’ve got stockholders who want a return on their money. That’s why they invested in those corporations. If they don’t get the money they want out of it, they’ll start looking at how they want to position this hospital to decrease expenses and maximize that dollar return.”
‘We can rock on like we’ve been rocking forever’
Oktibbeha County Board of Supervisors President Orlando Trainer said OCH provides valuable service to the county, but he feels it may be limited as a publicly-owned facility.
“We can rock on like we’ve been rocking forever,” Trainer said. “And if people are satisfied with that, then so be it. But I really think that by me being an elected official and a leader in this county, I need to have the length, breadth and magnitude to look a lot further.”
Trainer said a potential sale or lease might remove some of the hospital’s funding limitations and might help the county focus on improvements in public safety, infrastructure, education or other areas.
Oktibbeha County gives OCH almost $1.2 million per year to pay for a 2002 revenue bond. However, Hilton said the hospital returns the same amount to the county for a 2009 county general obligation bond.
The county also pays about $270,000 per year for OCH’s ambulance service, though Hilton said that is a county obligation delegated through the hospital. OCH, Oktibbeha County, Starkville and Mississippi State all contribute to the ambulance service.
Trainer said he’d be for a transaction if it “took nothing away from what we have and adds several key things we can do.” He said an example would be a deal that offers improvements that might help capture market share OCH is losing to competitors in the region like Baptist-Golden Triangle and North Mississippi Medical Center in Tupelo.
Trainer also said he’s not afraid of political repercussions.
“That’s a sacrifice I have to be prepared to make every election cycle,” he said. “In my mind, whatever we could possibly have far outweighs whatever happens to me. You do things because, even though they may not be popular, they’re in the best interests of the county, and it’s worth it.”
Brooks would still vote against Baptist
Though Brooks said the hospital lease worked out well in the end, he maintains he’d still vote against it, if given the chance. He said a lot of the public furor was in response to how supervisors handled the transaction.
“The original lease was more about how it was handled by some of the board members and their lack of input from the public,” Brooks said. “The public just felt like they were shoved in the corner.”
Baptist completed a $44 million construction and renovation project in 1998, which included a new emergency room and 18-bed critical care unit, the new Baptist Outpatient Pavilion and the Baptist Cancer Center. In 2005, Baptist completed a $34 million patient bed tower, which included 151 new private patient rooms, 10 new labor/delivery/recovery suites and more.
Baptist purchased the hospital for $30 million in 2006 to much less public furor than the lease in 1993. Lowndes County has since invested the money, $15 million in Arkansas-based Stephens Group investment firm, and the other $15 million in Renasant Bank. The county uses interest from those investments to fund capital improvements, such as building new facilities for justice court and E-911.
In 2011, Baptist completed the $10 million-plus Baptist Behavior Health Care Unit.
Today, Baptist Memorial Hospital-Golden Triangle has 315 licensed beds and 105 active physicians on staff.
Alex Holloway was formerly a reporter with The Dispatch.
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