The meeting in its entirety can be seen in a video below this article.
Darling spoke in the portion of the meeting reserved for comments from the JPs or other county officials, explaining “We talked about grant money yesterday. Myself, some of the folks from the hospital and the [Hope] mayor and city manager met with some of the governor's staff to discuss some financing, some further financing in the hospital that we have never gotten. Surprise, surprise.”
Since the purchase of the hospital by Pafford Medical Services last September, Darling said the Pafford family has invested about $7.7 million in maintenance, upgrades, payroll and benefits costs, Darling said. The city of Hope and Hempstead County have contributed $1 million each. But the hospital is still falling short of long-term financial stability at a time when the state surplus at the end of fiscal 2025 was at $367.9 million.
Requests by the Southwest Arkansas area legislators have so far not been met with success in obtaining state funding for a hospital whose upkeep suffered neglect during the years it was operated by Steward Health Care, which filed for bankruptcy in May of 2024. The building needs a new roof and some equipment needs replacing.
Darling referred to the recent designation of Southwest Arkansas Regional Medical Center as a critical access facility and uncertainty about what that will mean to when the hospital can receive the additional revenue from Medicare the designation would allow. “What that [designation] does is let us actually cover all our operating costs, plus one percent. The problem is that started August the 19th. As a clarification, we don't know whether we can file an interim cost report and get an interim payment, or whether we'll have to wait six months to file a cost report to get that income payment. The hiccup on that is that our cash flows are down to about 45 days we're billing. We're still struggling with some of our billing.”
Darling said that with the current vendor the hospital uses to do its billing, it is receiving about a million dollars per month. “We really need to be between $1.1 million and $1.5 million,” he said during Thursday’s meeting. “We’re really close to generating the revenue to generate that kind of income We’re just not able to bill it and collect it in a timely fashion.
Both the city and the county have applied for grants that would partially repair the roof and help upgrade equipment. Darling said word of whether one or both grants would be awarded will likely come in late October. But the odds of winning a grant would be long, as he made clear.
“There were 400 applications for $15 million if that tells you anything about the popularity,” Darling said.
While Darling said he was hearing good reviews of the services patients are getting at SWARMC in the hospital itself and at the emergency room, “it’s a matter in increasing our volume, increasing our billings. Realistically, from August 19th, we’re probably about six months in the current trajectory from when it will catch up.”
JP Vic Ford said he had to go there to be patched up after a bad cut that called for “a couple staples.” He said he was happy with the service. “Very professional, well done. Good service. Staff was very accommodating, very pleasant.”
JP Jessie Henry raised the question of whether the hospital should advertise. Darling said the difficulty would be in reaching a large enough audience. “If you ask what radio station everybody listens to in this part of the world, you get 16 different answers. But they have been doing some [advertising,] quite a bit on social media, and that's been the main focus.”
Darling also said there are plans to set up a clinic in Lafayette to accommodate the coming lithium mining operation to be built southeast of Hope, which the operators of the lithium mine would invest in. “So there are some good things coming up. We’ve just got to get over this little hump.”
In other business, the court approved three ordinances, the first was to accept a grant of $16,000 for the courthouse security station. The second receives the proceeds of a vehicle sale for $24,140 from Don Honea Sales Surplus and places it in the Sheriff’s Vehicles budget. The third moves $45,000 from the Lease Machinery and Equipment line item of the 2024-25 County Roads budget to the line item for Extra Help ($25,000) and Overtime ($20,000).
The meeting adjourned after about 17 minutes in session.
After the meeting, Darling said he was more encouraged by what he saw and heard in the Wednesday meeting than he was in a similar meeting with representatives of the governor that occurred in February. He observed first that the representatives themselves in the room were different. "They actually had somebody that knows where money comes from, where the money is. And he was somewhat encouraging as to where there might be some funding available, which we didn't get that first time."
He also noted that whereas in February most of the staffers were not from Arkansas, this time most were.