Mississippi Today
New health care coalition forms, including hospitals that left state hospital association
A new health care alliance will unite several of Mississippi’s largest hospital systems – all of which left the state hospital association following controversy over Medicaid expansion – under the umbrella of one of the state’s largest and most influential lobbying firms.
The new group will be helmed by former Mississippi Medicaid Director Drew Snyder, who served under two Republican governors who thwarted Medicaid expansion and the flow of billions of federal dollars to provide health insurance to low-income Mississippians for over a decade.
The new collaborative will focus on “providing sustainable solutions to challenges facing access to care,” said a press release. It will include representatives from the state’s leading acute and trauma care hospitals, rural hospitals, mental health providers and primary care providers.
Critics, along with the Mississippi Hospital Association, say the new group’s formation is motivated by partisan politics.
A slew of hospitals left the hospital association after the organization’s political action committee made its largest-ever contribution to Democratic gubernatorial candidate Brandon Presley, a strong supporter of Medicaid expansion, in 2023. All but one have joined the new collaborative.
This means lawmakers in 2025 will hear from two separate groups of hospitals and health care organizations, raising questions about whether their overall impact will be diluted without a unified voice.
Snyder, who declined repeated requests for comment for this story, will lead the Mississippi Healthcare Collaborative under the umbrella of multi-state, Jackson-based lobbying firm Capitol Resources and its new health policy consulting division, Health Resources.
Capitol Resources is a strong supporter of Republican Gov. Tate Reeves. The firm’s political action committee has contributed nearly $75,000 to Reeves since 2018.
Five of Capitol Resources’ scores of Mississippi clients hold multi-million dollar contracts with the Division of Medicaid.
A query to the Mississippi Ethics Commission published just days before Snyder announced his resignation from the Division of Medicaid sought an opinion on how a former head of an agency could work for a lobbying firm with clients in the same field as his or her public service without violating state law. Requests for opinions are anonymous.
The Ethics Commission ruled that the public official could not work for compensation on matters “which he or she was directly or personally involved while working for the government,” but would not be forbidden from working for a company that does.
A national ethics expert told Mississippi Today that when public officials transition to private sector work, particularly in the same field as their public service, it can raise ethical issues.
The knowledge and information public officials hold can be used as a “leg up,” which leads to unfairness in private companies’ and lobbying organizations’ business dealings with government entities, said professor John Pelissero, the director of Government Ethics at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University.
Capitol Resources has for years represented Centene, a company that currently holds $5.2 billion worth of contracts for managing Medicaid beneficiaries care through its subsidiary Magnolia Health. The company has paid the lobbying firm $3.9 million over the last decade, according to the Secretary of State’s website.
Tim Moore, the former head of the Mississippi Hospital Association, said he has concerns about the conflict posed by a lobbying firm representing two health care organizations with competing interests.
“How do you represent a managed care company and a bunch of hospitals at the same time?” he said.
Moore was ousted by the Mississippi Hospital Association’s Board of Governors following hospitals’ withdrawal from the organization.
Clare Hester, the founder and managing partner of Capitol Resources, did not respond to a request for comment by press time.
The evolution of the Mississippi Hospital Association
The Mississippi Hospital Association was for many years one of the most powerful lobbies at the Capitol. But that began to change with the passage of the federal Affordable Care Act, which created a partisan rift over whether or not the state should expand Medicaid.
The trade association splintered in May 2023, starting with the departure of the state’s largest hospital system, University of Mississippi Medical Center, in May. Four additional hospitals, all led by Gregg Gibbes, left the association in 2024.
Hospital leaders at the time declined to say what precipitated their decision to leave, other than to cite concerns about the hospital association’s leadership. But the exodus was widely interpreted as a rebuke of the association’s support for Presley and, specifically, Medicaid expansion.
Research has shown that Medicaid expansion would provide millions of dollars to Mississippi’s struggling hospital system.
As Reeves faced an uphill reelection bid, due in part to his opponent’s support of Medicaid expansion and his adamant opposition, he worked with Snyder to create a new program to provide supplemental payments to hospitals to offset low Medicaid payments. While the program did not directly support low-income Mississippians, it was estimated to generate $700 million for the state’s largest hospitals.
Republican House leaders pushing for Medicaid expansion in the last legislative session said the program prevented some large hospitals from being strong advocates for expansion, in part due to fear that Gov. Reeves would punish such a move by doing away with the expanded payments.
The Mississippi Hospital Association has 76 current hospital members, according to its online directory. Some are members of hospital systems.
“The Mississippi Hospital Association will continue to be the trusted voice in health care and to offer education and quality advocacy solutions based on sound health care policy – and not politics – as we have successfully done for almost 100 years,” president and CEO Richard Roberson told Mississippi Today. Roberson is the former head of TrueCare, a provider-led, nonprofit managed care organization that contracts with Medicaid.
Kent Nicaud, one of Reeves’ top campaign donors and the president and CEO of Memorial Hospital, will serve as chair of the collaborative’s board. Memorial Health System left the hospital association in 2023, and is a current client of Capitol Resources.
Moore said having two major health care trade associations in the state will “create division among the industry, which is not good.”
“…The best thing for all hospitals is to be united in one voice, because they have similar issues, whether they’re a small hospital or a large hospital,” he said.
Along with hospitals that left the association, Mississippi Healthcare Collaborative incorporates several existing Capitol Resources clients, including the state’s 21 Federally Qualified Community Health Centers, and Universal Health Services, a company with five behavioral health centers in Mississippi.
“For too long, too many health providers have been siloed in our advocacy. It’s time to sit down at the same table and work together,” said Terrence Shirley, CEO of the Community Health Center Association of Mississippi, which represents the Federally Qualified Community Health Centers, in a press release.
Other members of the new group include Methodist Rehabilitation Center and Northwest Regional Medical Center in Clarksdale.
The group’s members are based in 78 of Mississippi’s 82 counties.
Ochsner Medical Center, which left the Mississippi Hospital Association last year and is a client of Capitol Resources, is not listed as a member of the new collaborative. Ochsner did not respond to Mississippi Today by the time of publication.
Geoff Pender contributed reporting.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
On this day in 1946
Dec. 23, 1946
University of Tennessee refused to play a basketball game with Duquesne University, because they had a Black player, Chuck Cooper. Despite their refusal, the all-American player and U.S. Navy veteran went on to become the first Black player to participate in a college basketball game south of the Mason-Dixon line. Cooper became the first Black player ever drafted in the NBA — drafted by the Boston Celtics. He went on to be admitted to the Basketball Hall of Fame.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
Podcast: Ray Higgins: PERS needs both extra cash and benefit changes for future employees
Mississippi Today’s Bobby Harrison talks with Ray Higgins, executive director of the Mississippi Public Employees Retirement System, about proposed changes in pension benefits for future employees and what is needed to protect the system for current employees and retirees. Higgins also stresses the importance of the massive system to the Mississippi economy.
READ MORE: As lawmakers look to cut taxes, Mississippi mayors and county leaders outline infrastructure needs
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
‘Bringing mental health into the spaces where moms already are’: UMMC program takes off
A program aimed at increasing access to mental health services for mothers has taken off at the University of Mississippi Medical Center.
The program, called CHAMP4Moms, is an extension of an existing program called CHAMP – which stands for Child Access to Mental Health and Psychiatry. The goal is to make it easier for moms to reach mental health resources during a phase when some may need it the most and have the least time.
CHAMP4Moms offers a direct phone line that health providers can call if they are caring for a pregnant woman or new mother they believe may have unaddressed mental health issues. On the line, health providers can speak directly to a reproductive psychiatrist who can guide them on how to screen, diagnose and treat mothers. That means that moms don’t have to go out of their way to find a psychiatrist, and health care providers who don’t have extensive training in psychiatry can still help these women.
“Basically, we’re trying to bring mental health into the spaces where moms already are,” explained Calandrea Taylor, the program manager. “Because of the low workforce that we have in the state, it’s a lot to try to fill the state with mental health providers. But what we do is bring the mental health practice to you and where mothers are. And we’re hoping that that reduces stigma.”
Launched in 2023, the program has had a slow lift off, Taylor said. But the phone line is up and running, as the team continues to make additions to the program – including a website with resources that Taylor expects will go live next year.
To fill the role of medical director, UMMC brought in a California-based reproductive psychiatrist, Dr. Emily Dossett. Dossett, who grew up in Mississippi and still has family in the state, says it has been rewarding to come full circle and serve her home state – which suffers a dearth of mental health providers and has no reproductive psychiatrists.
“I love it. It’s really satisfying to take the experience I’ve been able to pull together over the past 20 years practicing medicine and then apply it to a place I love,” Dossett said. “I feel like I understand the people I work with, I relate to them, I like hearing where they’re from and being able to picture it … That piece of it has really been very much a joy.”
As medical director, Dossett is able to educate maternal health providers on mental health issues. But she’s also an affiliate professor at UMMC, which she says allows her to train up the next generation of psychiatrists on the importance of maternal and reproductive psychiatry – an often-overlooked aspect in the field.
If people think of reproductive mental health at all, they likely think of postpartum depression, Dossett said. But reproductive psychiatry is far more encompassing than just the postpartum time period – and includes many more conditions than just depression.
“Most reproductive psychiatrists work with pregnant and postpartum people, but there’s also work to be done around people who have issues connected to their menstrual cycle or perimenopause,” she explained. “… There’s depression, certainly. But we actually see more anxiety, which comes in lots of different forms – it can be panic disorder, general anxiety, OCD.”
Tackling mental health in this population doesn’t just improve people’s quality of life. It can be lifesaving – and has the potential to mitigate some of the state’s worst health metrics.
Mental health disorders are the leading cause of pregnancy-related death, which is defined by the Centers for Disease Control as any death up to a year postpartum that is caused by or worsened by pregnancy.
In Mississippi, 80% of pregnancy-related deaths between 2016 and 2020 were deemed preventable, according to the latest Mississippi Maternal Mortality Report.
Mississippi is not alone in this, Dossett said. Historically, mental health has not been taken seriously in the western world, for a number of reasons – including stigma and a somewhat arbitrary division between mind and body, Dossett explained.
“You see commercials on TV of happy pregnant ladies. You see magazines of celebrities and their baby bumps, and everybody is super happy. And so, if you don’t feel that way, there’s this tremendous amount of shame … But another part of it is medicine and the way that our health system is set up, it’s just classically divided between physical and mental health.”
Dossett encourages women to tell their doctor about any challenges they’re facing – even if they seem normal.
“There are a lot of people who have significant symptoms, but they think it’s normal,” Dossett said. “They don’t know that there’s a difference between the sort of normal adjustment that people have after having a baby – and it is a huge adjustment – and symptoms that get in the way of their ability to connect or bond with the baby, or their ability to eat or sleep, or take care of their other children or eventually go to work.”
She also encourages health care providers to develop a basic understanding of mental health issues and to ask patients questions about their mood, thoughts and feelings.
CHAMP4Moms is a resource Dossett hopes providers will take advantage of – but she also hopes they will shape and inform the program in its inaugural year.
“We’re available, we’re open for calls, we’re open for feedback and suggestions, we’re open for collaboration,” she said. “We want this to be something that can hopefully really move the needle on perinatal mental health and substance use in the state – and I think it can.”
Providers can call the CHAMP main line at 601-984-2080 for resources and referral options throughout the state.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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