OKTIBBEHA COUNTY – With Baptist Memorial Health Care set to take over OCH Regional Medical Center, the entire region stands to benefit from more technology, the ability to recruit top level physicians and coordination with Baptist’s Columbus hospital.
“I do think we have an opportunity to recruit world-class physicians to the Golden Triangle who can share calls at both hospitals and deploy services at both facilities, so that people can come to their hometown hospital to get the best care possible,” President and CEO Jason Little told The Dispatch on Friday.
Baptist and Oktibbeha County supervisors on Wednesday announced a purchase agreement for OCH had been signed by both parties. The agreement includes a $55 million purchase price on top of a $96.8 million investment commitment from Baptist to go towards facilities, technology and recruitment at the hospital. Supervisors anticipate a final closing by the end of September.
With the transition will come changes. For one, Little said BMHC is looking forward to adding its logo in front of the hospital, but Little was mum on what OCH will be renamed. Baptist Memorial Hospital-Golden Triangle in Columbus will keep its name.
“The hospital in Oktibbeha County will continue to have a name that references its legacy in service to the county, but also it’s going to get Baptist in the name,” he said.
Board of Supervisors President Marvell Howard called it a landmark decision for the future of the county’s health care.
“Signing this agreement with (BMHC) marks a pivotal step toward a partnership that will ensure our hospital not only survives but thrives,” Howard said. “We have pursued this partnership to ensure our friends, neighbors and families will have access to high-quality, local health care for decades to come.”
Expanding services
Little said there were many factors that made buying OCH an attractive prospect.
“I do think having other health care assets nearby really does allow us to take advantage of economies of scale, so that we can recruit world-class health care providers to the region and really pool resources in a way that we can deliver … high level, high quality care that might not otherwise be available, certainly is not being provided in Starkville today,” Little said.
Baptist has agreed to commit $34 million of its investment to recruiting new physicians and expanding services. Little said that could include more specialty services that neither of the two hospitals would have been able to sustain on their own.
“I think heretofore, areas in Mississippi that are just kind of a standalone in a vacuum couldn’t support two neurosurgeons or three neurosurgeons to deliver care,” Little said. “But having a place like the Golden Triangle where we can deploy a service line like neurosciences is a real benefit.”
As a part of the purchase agreement, Baptist will offer employment to current OCH employees in good standing. Little said the choice made sense for the company, allowing Baptist to implement its own systems and expectations within a staff that is already “psychologically and emotionally” invested in caring for patients in the area.
“There’s a great team at OCH. It was important for us to be able to keep that intact, but to (also) bring them a lot of new tools that they’ve never had access to before as well as … expectation for how we do things in our system delivery of care. So we’ll be able to build on what’s there, bring all team members over and get going in our model.”
Up to standard
Little said Baptist wants to begin the transition with momentum, aiming to bring the Oktibbeha hospital up to standard. One goal, for example, is to advance the hospital to a Level 3 trauma center, a designation BMH-GT already has. Level 3 trauma centers generally provide initial resuscitation of trauma patients and implement interventions to stabilize patients before they’re transferred to a higher-level care facility if necessary.
Little said the provider also aims to update the technology and infrastructure at OCH, committing more than $60 million to the effort. One of the benefits to the system’s size, Little said, is the technology Baptist brings with it.
“For instance, every ICU room in our system is monitored with cameras and doctors and nurses at our corporate location, not to offset the care that’s provided in those ICU rooms, but to just complement it – an extra set of people watching vital signs in the middle of the night to provide better care,” he said. “The same is true with telemedicine and virtual nursing and other kinds of technologies that we provide (from the corporate office) to Columbus now and will provide the same thing in Oktibbeha County.”
For patients, Little said those changes will translate to a high-quality care experience that they can have close to home.
“So we’re excited to be able to bring the Starkville hospital up on those tools, and we’ll be deploying all of that technology in the first year of coming online,” he said. “And then we’ve got work to do with facilities planning and other things too.”
Little believes these investments will reap returns not only for BMHC, but also patients in Oktibbeha County.
“We’ve got a fair amount of work to do right now as we move toward the final closing to get ready for transition,” Little said. “But in those early days, what we’ll really be working hard on is to deliver all the world class systems that Baptist is known for to the Oktibbeha County community.”
McRae is a general assignment and education reporter for The Dispatch.
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Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 34 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
