An update on the status of Hope’s only hospital and the only hospital that covers Hempstead, Lafayette and Nevada Counties was provided by Southwest Arkansas Regional Hospital’s Administrator in Monday’s Lions Club meeting.
At this point, Shelby Brown said, the hospital is now able to take payment from Medicare and Medicaid. This began when the hospital received its number from the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services in mid-December.
On the other hand, with regard to private insurance, Brown said that while the hospital could take payment from Arkansas Municipal League, Arkansas Blue Cross Blue Shield, it hopes to hear word on whether it can take United Health Care payments this week. The hospital has also sent its application material to many other carriers that Lions named during the question and answer period, Ambetter, Cigna, Aetna, Tri-care and Multiplan, Brown said.
The hospital is also making requests of Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders, most specifically for a meeting on the subject of the hospital’s need for funds to replace the roof and address other issues.
“I actually talked to [Arkansas] Representative [Dolly] Henley this morning,” Brown said. “We have a proposal at the governor's office for about $7 million for infrastructure. … well over $5 million is really for infrastructure and equipment, Two million for operations, but it needs a new roof and it needs a new HVAC system, and those are the biggest pieces. We need some cardiac monitoring and some other things. But call your representative. Dolly's fighting for us, and she is really keeping up. And she's new up there, so, but she calls me once a week, and she is really trying.”
The hospital is now able to offer MRI diagnostics, having hired a technician for the machine in January. During the time the hospital first came under the ownership of Pafford Medical Systems, it was without an MRI technician for about three months, Brown said.
The hospital has also undergone a process by which several doctors whose clinics had relationships with Wadley Regional will be moving to locations closer to the hospital itself. Brown said the moving of offices and equipment was even taking place during the recent cold spell.
The decision has been made to make the hospital into a critical access facility, which would mean higher Medicaid/Medicare reimbursements. That would entail reducing the number of beds from 48 to 25, but Brown said the facility seldom uses as many as 24 beds anyway. The Gerontological Psychiatric beds would go from 12 to 10, “but the 10 psychiatric beds don't count against my 25 inpatient beds. So that's still plenty. It's not an issue. You have to have a average length of stay of 96 hours. Again, that shouldn't change what we're doing, and I think it will help make this hospital financially stable, which is what we're looking for.”
Brown described the hospital financially as “starting to see some money coming in but still peddling along.” She also had a word for the public about what it should do if it wants the hospital to remain open in Hope.
“Jamie Pafford [CEO of Pafford Health Systems] stepped up to save your hospital, but the only way your hospital is going to stay open is if you support it. You can't bypass your local hospital,” Brown said.