Citizens can weigh in on the potential sale or lease of OCH Regional Medical Center during a public hearing set for 5:30 p.m. Thursday in the courtroom of the chancery courthouse.
The county owns the hospital and is exploring a sale or lease for the second time in seven years. Voters overwhelmingly rejected privatizing OCH in 2017.
Marvell Howard, president for the Oktibbeha County Board of Supervisors, said supervisors plan to share a strategic operations assessment of the hospital prepared by Raymond James Financial Services. OCH board members and administrators will also attend.
“The role of the board of supervisors at this point was to engage a professional (service) that could do some data gathering for the county, and sort of give us a picture of the state of things at OCH,” Howard said. “And once we received that information, our role then was to share that with the citizens of Oktibbeha County.”
The assessment, which was presented to the board in executive session during its Aug. 26 meeting, is available on the county’s website. It includes information on the hospital’s income, debt profile, capital spending, utilization, nursing staff and retention, revenue leakage and more.
The Raymond James report shows that the county’s total operating revenue from July 1, 2023 to June 30, 2024 was $79.7 million, though it says this number was inflated by Medicaid Mississippi Hospital Access Payments payments, which have increased by $7,224,512 or 232.8% over the past five years.
These payments created a “positive operating margin for the first time in recent history” for the hospital, the report said. Without those payments, the operating margin would once again turn negative.
Other challenges listed in the report include the inpatient facility being underutilized, the need to increase revenue through new services, hospital staffing issues and turnover, the rise of costs for drugs and supplies and costs of updating technology.
In the report, Raymond James recommends the hospital take on a new “strategic capital partner” to acquire OCH assets, share resources, expand current available services and fund current and future capital needs.
OCH Regional Medical Center CEO Jim Jackson told The Dispatch that the hospital’s “unwavering commitment to delivering exceptional care remains” on Aug. 27.
In a phone call with The Dispatch Monday, Jackson reiterated that commitment. He also said the hospital’s trustees desire to be a “positive resource” to the board of supervisors, hospital medical staff and community members throughout the process.
“(The board of trustees) have been very engaged with the hospital and its operations for a long time,” Jackson said. “That’s what they do. They meet every month. And so, the wellbeing of the community and making sure that services are provided at a high quality is their ongoing concern and main priority.”
State law says in order to push the sale or lease to a ballot referendum, at least 1,500 registered voters in the county must sign a petition that is submitted to the circuit clerk’s office no more than 21 days after the public hearing.
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