Connect with us

Mississippi Today

‘I can’t figure it out’: Another hospital leaves the state hospital association. Its leader is flummoxed.

Published

2 years ago

on

On the heels of several major hospitals departing the Mississippi Hospital Association, the organization’s leader is baffled.

The hospitals’ move comes shortly after the association’s political action committee made a $250,000 contribution to Democratic gubernatorial candidate Brandon Presley, an outspoken proponent of Medicaid expansion.

The state’s largest public hospital system, the University of Mississippi Medical Center, announced in a letter on April 28 that it was leaving the MHA. Days later, three more hospitals — Singing River on the coast, Gulfport’s Memorial Hospital and George County Regional in Lucedale — followed suit.

Forrest General Hospital in Hattiesburg on Monday became the most recent hospital to leave the organization, as first reported by Magnolia Tribune.

The PAC made the donation – the largest it has ever made – in late April, MHA Executive Director Tim Moore said.

Forrest General’s termination letter said the departure was fueled by “recent events,” while the other four hospitals cited concerns with MHA leadership.

Moore said donating to Presley’s campaign was recommended by the MHA’s board of governors, who are administrators of member hospitals elected by MHA members.

“We all have had these discussions for a number of years now that we support candidates that support hospitals, and here is a candidate that is coming very strongly forward with a complete health care agenda,” Moore said. “It was certainly not just … it was not my decision.”

Presley, a Democrat, is running against incumbent Republican Gov. Tate Reeves in the 2023 statewide elections. While Reeves has been an active opponent of Medicaid expansion, Presley has vowed to expand Medicaid if he’s elected governor.

Moore, who’s led the MHA for nearly 10 years, suspects the donation was a catalyst. The hospitals’ departures have left him in disbelief, he said.

“There’s nothing else that has changed. Nothing,” he said in an interview with Mississippi Today last week. “Our strategy has not changed.”

Mississippi hospitals as a whole are struggling amid the pandemic, when labor and operating costs skyrocketed. The struggle is most apparent in the state’s rural hospitals — about a third are at risk of closure.

Experts say Medicaid expansion would bring in millions to Mississippi and insure an additional 200,000 to 300,000 Mississippians. State leaders such as Gov. Tate Reeves, the incumbent candidate, have remained opposed to the policy change, though most Mississippians and lawmakers support it.

“How can anybody blame the hospital association for committing upfront to somebody that has committed to helping hospitals and patients across the state? How can you condemn that?” Moore said. “I can’t figure it out.”

Multiple requests for comment to George County Regional Hospital went unanswered. Spokespeople for UMMC, Singing River, Forrest and Memorial said that hospital administration had no further comment on their decisions to leave the MHA.

A connection to Reeves is clear for at least one hospital.

Memorial’s CEO Kent Nicaud has consistently been one of Reeves’ top donors, leading to an appointment to the state gaming commission earlier this year. Reeves also appointed Nicaud’s wife, Jenny, as an administrative law judge for the Mississippi Workers Compensation Commission in 2021.

While expansion isn’t a silver bullet, experts agree that it would go a long way to increasing the financial viability of Mississippi’s struggling hospitals. Moore previously said that the state’s hospitals run up about $600 million annually in uncompensated care costs.

Moore said that it’s difficult to imagine any hospital CEO in Mississippi as an opponent of Medicaid expansion because of the vast financial benefits.

“It is a good policy, a fair one,” Moore said. “It’s good for the state of Mississippi. It’s good for the patients. It’s good for the providers. It’s an economic stimulus. It just goes on and on. And there’s just no logical reason not to be trying to move forward.

“While I’m sitting in this seat, I’m nonpartisan. I’m looking for folks that will support our hospitals and providers to take care of patients.”

Michael Beyer, Presley’s communications director, said Presley was proud to have earned the support of the MHA and if elected, would work to “end Tate Reeves’ hospital crisis.”

“Tate Reeves needs to answer why there is always enough taxpayer money for pet projects for his celebrity friends and personal trainer but never enough to solve his hospital crisis, which has left many rural hospitals across the state scrambling to keep their lights on and 220,000 working Mississippians without healthcare,” Beyer said in a statement.

Shelby Wilcher, Reeves’ press secretary, said the Governor’s office “does not have any comment on MHA’s internal affairs.”

The MHA, a member of the American Hospital Association, represents the interests of Mississippi’s hospitals and advocates for health care policy change, including Medicaid expansion. They also offer services to member hospitals, like a health information exchange program and educational courses. According to its website, the MHA comprises over 100 hospitals, health care systems and other providers, as well as over 50,000 employees.

While the PAC operates as a separate organization from the MHA, it answers to the same board. And Moore serves on the board, as well as director of both organizations.

Moore said during the nearly 100 years that the MHA has represented the state’s hospitals, hospitals have rotated in and out of the organization, but those departures have not been publicized.

“Hopefully at some point we can reconcile whatever differences these are with members that have become dissatisfied or whatever has been the confusion, because I will say I’ve been extremely disappointed as to how these were handled,” Moore said.

Whether or not hospitals are members of the MHA, they reap the benefits of the changes the organization advocates for, he said, but it’s harder to convince state lawmakers to make policy changes when the hospitals are fractured.

“In a state like Mississippi, with small geography and a relatively small population … if you break them up into segments, you have a much more difficult job in trying to unify the industry and come in one voice,” he said. “If you implement another association … they tend to undermine each other.”

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Did you miss our previous article…
https://www.biloxinewsevents.com/?p=241001

Related Topics:
Continue Reading

Mississippi Today

On this day in 1956

Published

19 hours ago

on

December 25, 2024

By

mississippitoday.org – Jerry Mitchell – 2024-12-25 07:00:00

Dec. 25, 1956

Civil rights activist Fred Shuttllesworth Credit: Wikipedia

Fred Shuttlesworth somehow survived the KKK bombing that took out his home next to the Bethel Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama.

An arriving policeman advised him to leave town fast. In the “Eyes on the Prize” documentary, Shuttlesworth quoted himself as replying, “Officer, you’re not me. You go back and tell your Klan brethren if God could keep me through this, then I’m here for the duration.’”

Shuttlesworth and Bethel saw what happened as proof that they would be protected as they pursued their fight against racial injustice. The next day, he boarded a bus with other civil rights activists to challenge segregation laws that persisted, despite a U.S. Supreme Court decision that ordered the city of Montgomery, Alabama, to desegregate its bus service.

Months after this, an angry mob of Klansmen met Shuttlesworth after he tried to enroll his daughters into the all-white school in Birmingham. They beat him with fists, chains and brass knuckles. His wife, Ruby, was stabbed in the hip, trying to get her daughters back in the car. His daughter, Ruby Fredericka, had her ankle broken. When the examining physician was amazed the pastor failed to suffer worse injuries, Shuttlesworth said, “Well, doctor, the Lord knew I lived in a hard town, so he gave me a hard head.”

Despite continued violence against him and Bethel, he persisted. He helped Martin Luther King Jr. found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and was instrumental in the 1963 Birmingham Campaign that led to the desegregation of downtown Birmingham.

A statue of Shuttlesworth can be seen outside the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, and Birmingham’s airport bears his name. The Bethel church, which was bombed three times, is now a historic landmark.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Continue Reading

Mississippi Today

On this day in 1865

Published

2 days ago

on

December 24, 2024

By

mississippitoday.org – Jerry Mitchell – 2024-12-24 07:00:00

Dec. 24, 1865

The Ku Klux Klan began on Christmas Eve in 1865. Credit: Zinn Education Project

Months after the fall of the Confederacy and the end of slavery, a half dozen veterans of the Confederate Army formed a private social club in Pulaski, Tennessee, called the Ku Klux Klan. The KKK soon became a terrorist organization, brutalizing and killing Black Americans, immigrants, sympathetic whites and others. 

While the first wave of the KKK operated in the South through the 1870s, the second wave spread throughout the U.S., adding Catholics, Jews and others to their enemies’ list. Membership rose to 4 million or so. 

The KKK returned again in the 1950s and 1960s, this time in opposition to the civil rights movement. Despite the history of violence by this organization, the federal government has yet to declare the KKK a terrorist organization.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Continue Reading

Mississippi Today

An old drug charge sent her to prison despite a life transformation. Now Georgia Sloan is home

Published

2 days ago

on

December 24, 2024

By

mississippitoday.org – Mina Corpuz – 2024-12-24 04:00:00

CANTON –  Georgia Sloan is home, back from a potentially life-derailing stint in prison that she was determined to instead make meaningful. 

She hadn’t used drugs in three years and she had a life waiting for her outside the Mississippi Correctional Institute for Women in Pearl: a daughter she was trying to reunite with, a sick mother and a career where she found purpose. 

During 10 months of incarceration, Sloan, who spent over half of her life using drugs, took classes, read her Bible and helped other women. Her drug possession charge was parole eligible, and the Parole Board approved her for early release. 

At the end of October, she left the prison and returned to Madison County. The next day she was back at work at Musee, a Canton-based bath products company that employs formerly incarcerated women like Sloan and others in the community facing difficulties. She first started working at the company in 2021. 

“This side of life is so beautiful. I would literally hold on to my promise every single minute of the day while I was in (prison),” Sloan told Mississippi Today in December. 

Next year, she is moving into a home in central Mississippi, closer to work and her new support system. Sloan plans to bring her daughter and mother to live with her. Sloan is hopeful of regaining custody of her child, who has been cared for by her aunt on a temporary basis. 

“This is my area now,” she said. “This has become my family, my life. This is where I want my child to grow up. This is where I want to make my life because this is my life.” 

Additionally, Sloan is taking other steps to readjust to life after prison: getting her driver’s license for the first time in over a decade, checking in monthly with her parole officer and paying court-ordered fines and restitution. 

In December 2023, Sloan went to court in Columbus for an old drug possession charge from when she was still using drugs. 

Sloan thought the judge would see how much she had turned her life around through Crossroads Ministries, a nonprofit women’s reentry center she entered in 2021, and Musee. Her boss Leisha Pickering who drove her to court and spoke as a witness on Sloan’s behalf, thought the judge would order house arrest or time served. 

Circuit Judge James “Jim” Kitchens of the 16th District.

Instead, Circuit Judge James Kitchens sentenced her to eight years with four years suspended and probation. 

He seemed doubtful about her transformation, saying she didn’t have a “contrite heart.” By choosing to sell drugs, Kitchens said she was “(making) other people addicts,” according to a transcript of the Dec. 4, 2023, hearing. 

“I felt like my life literally crumbled before my eyes,” Sloan said about her return to prison. “Everything I had worked so hard for, it felt like it had been snatched from me.”

She was taken from the courtroom to the Lowndes County Detention Center, where she spent two months before her transfer to the women’s prison in Rankin County. 

Sloan found the county jail more difficult because there was no separation between everyone there. But the prison had its own challenges, such as violence between inmates and access to drugs, which would have threatened her sobriety. 

She kept busy by taking classes, which helped her set a goal to take college courses one day with a focus on business. Visits, phone calls and letters from family members and staff from Musee and Crossroads were her lifeline. 

“I did not let prison break me, I rose above it, and I got to help restore other ladies,” Sloan said. 

She also helped several women in the prison get to Crossroads – the same program that helped her and others at Musee. 

Sloan credits a long-term commitment to Crossroads and Musee for turning her life around – the places where she said someone believed in her and took a chance on her. 

Georgia Sloan, left, and Leisha Pickering, founder and CEO of Musee Bath, sit for a portrait at the Musee Bath facility in Canton, Miss., on Wednesday, Dec. 11, 2024. Pickering has supported Sloan through her journey of recovery and reentry, providing employment and advocacy as Sloan rebuilds her life after incarceration. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi Today

Pickering, Musee’s CEO, said in the three years she’s known Sloan, she’s watched her grow and become a light for others. 

The bath and lifestyle company has employed over 300 formerly incarcerated women in the past dozen years, but Pickering said not everyone has had the same support, advocacy and transformation as Sloan. Regardless, Pickering believes each person is worth fighting for. 

When Sloan isn’t traveling for work to craft markets with Pickering, she shares an office with her Musee colleague Julie Crutcher, who is also formerly incarcerated and a graduate of Crossroads’ programs. She also considers Crutcher a close friend and mentor.

Sloan has traveled to Columbus to see her mother and daughter whom she spent Thanksgiving with. She will see them again for Christmas and celebrate her daughter’s 12th birthday the day after.

Her involvement with the criminal justice system has made Sloan want to advocate for prison reform to help others and be an inspiration to others.

“I never knew what I was capable of,” Sloan said.  “I never knew how much people truly, genuinely love me and love being around me. I never knew how much I could have and how much I could offer the world.”

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Continue Reading

Trending