OKTIBBEHA COUNTY — Oktibbeha County District 2 Supervisor Orlando Trainer had a clear and urgent message for the administration and Board of Trustees for OCH Regional Medical Center: Get your hospital in order or we’ll do it for you.
This came on the heels of the discussion about the 2022 audit, which showed the county-owned hospital operating at a $3.3 million deficit for the fiscal year, during a joint meeting between the two boards Thursday. The hospital showed a profit of $4.7 million in 2021, according to the presentation.
“I’m of the opinion that if we are going to be in the (hospital) business, we need to get in business, and if we are not going to be in the business, we need to get out,” Trainer said. “If we are going to support this hospital, right now, I just don’t see how you all are going to be able to compete without the county having to help you. We need to have a strong conversation about that if we want to compete in the hospital business. Will it take more taxes to compete, or do we need to look at our options? … We can rock and roll here forever, but we will not be able to compete.”
The 2022 deficit, according to OCH CEO James Jackson, is the result of several factors, one of which is the decrease in patients admitted to the hospital.
“What we are seeing now is that the only patients in the hospital are the sickest patients,” Jackson said. “The reason is because the trends over the last 20 years or more have been driven by the U.S. government to keep patients out of hospitals. More things have transitioned to outpatient procedures.”
The hospital has also seen a steady decrease in the number of surgeries performed, a trend which Jackson said also hurts the bottom line.
The number of surgeries has dropped from 4,800 in 2018 to 3,500 in 2022. He attributed the decline in both the departure of physicians and the COVID-19 pandemic.
To address the deficit, the hospital is utilizing its strategic plan it enacted in 2022.
The main focus is building the patient base in Oktibbeha County and the surrounding areas, Jackson said.
As of 2022, 58.5% of OCH’s patients are from its home county. He said raising this number will help put a dent in the losses.
“That is something that needs to be improved on, attracting patients from our home county,” Jackson said. “… For a community hospital, the target is 80%. … No community hospital can survive if its own citizens don’t use it.”
Jackson said OCH has cut costs where possible, but it is not the only solution.
“Cutting costs is not the singular thing that is going to get us back to profitability,” he said. “You can only cut costs so much until quality is impacted. That’s not what we want to do.”
Voters in 2017 rejected a ballot issue, put forth by county supervisors, that could have sold OCH to a private company or nonprofit.
UMMC Affiliation
Trainer also inquired about OCH’s affiliation with University of Mississippi Medical Center, a five-year deal that was enacted in 2018 and renewed this year.
The main tenets of the affiliation were supply chain assistance, telemedicine support, physician recruitment assistance, incremental specialty care and use of UMMC’s EPIC electronic health system, according to Jackson’s presentation.
Yet, Jackson indicated OCH doesn’t directly benefit from many of those tenets.
The supply chain assistance was of no use because the savings were less than what OCH already received, Jackson told supervisors. OCH does not use the UMMC telemedicine program. Also, while OCH was hoping to “piggyback” on UMMC’s EPIC software system, it is built for much larger hospitals and would be cost-prohibitive to OCH, Jackson said.
Affiliation has helped recruitment somewhat, Jackson said, but he feels the hospital’s new in-house recruitment can be more effective.
The most beneficial affiliation tenet has been incremental specialty care, he said, with a cardiologist holding clinics on site once a week. However, he said the hospital needs its own full-time cardiologist and other specialists.
“Not all hope is lost as far as getting some value from it,” Jackson said. “I think if we are going to pursue future value, it is going to come from (incremental specialty care and possibly recruiting).”
‘That’s all we can ask’
Not all supervisors were as blunt as Trainer regarding the information presented.
District 3 Supervisor Marvell Howard said he appreciated Jackson being upfront with them.
“It certainly wasn’t a glowing report, but I’m sure CEOs all over are having to stand up and give these same type of reports,” Howard said. “What I appreciate is you didn’t try to fluff it up or sugar coat it. You gave it to us like it was. You told us what your plans were. That’s all we can ask of you.”
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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 35 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
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