We are losing two major hospitals in the upper

[doc03]

Ohio Valley 1079 jobs. The ER in the only hospital left is overwealmed. If you are in any kind of major accident and have head trauma they have to fly you to Pittsburgh 60 miles away or Columbus 120 miles away. The nearest mental health facility is 60 miles away. Is this from government cuts or what. I understand small rural hospitals are closing nationwide. It is scary to think if you have an emergency it takes an hour to get treatment. If we had a mass shooting like in Texas we would be dead.

[Wounded Bear]

1. We don't have a healthcare "system"...

we have a healthcare industry, and decisions about access to care are being made on financial reasons, not on medical or ethical ones.

It's from privatization. Corporate execs only care about profits, not healthcare outcomes of people they don't know.

[Nay]

3. As long as healthcare is privatized, this will continue. nt

[wasupaloopa]

5. That is what I am talking about. You have to consider

finance along with services. You won’t have services without out financing them.

You expect people to be there because you have a right to their services.

[wasupaloopa]

2. A similar thing could happen with MFA. If costs are not covered by reimbursements

the facilities have to close. My guess not covering costs is why you are losing hospitals.

I was a controller of a rural medical clinic. It no longer exists for that reason

No body talks about the provider side of the health care debate. It is as if they should just take what you give them and shut up and provide care because it is a right.

[doc03]

4. People are losing their doctors that were associated

with those hospitals. A friend of mine went to the ER last week it took 12 hours to get a room in the ER.

[wasupaloopa]

8. I know what it is. I have been a part of it.

Our clinic had 21 doctors. We treated people with Medicare, Medicaid, private pay, insurance and charity.

Most were uninsured or Medicare. It was in the town of Ridgecrest were the 7.4 earthquake hit last month.

Medicare pays 80% of what insurance companies pay. When you have mostly Medicare you go broke.

[lunasun]

13. 1 from experience working with providers. They have bills from sources that if left unpaid

due to low or non payment from services provided will eventually have to close up shop.
Can’t send all your supply vendors $2 a month and tell them that’s all you have right now for long

[mia]

6. 72 Percent of All Rural Hospital Closures Are in States That Rejected the Medicaid Expansion

I'm sorry that this is happening to you and your neighbors.

States that refused Obamacare's Medicaid expansion are hemorrhaging hospitals in rural areas.

Roughly 20 percent of Americans live in rural areas, including more than 13 million children, according to the last U.S. census. And, according to research and reporting by the Pittsburg Morning Sun and its parent company, GateHouse Media, those people have been steadily losing access to hospitals for years.

In short, the federal government provided funds to expand coverage for Medicaid, a program that helps pay for health care for low income patients. But the expansion was optional, and 14 Republican-controlled states rejected to take the money. The only state that bucked this trend was Utah, where rural hospitals were among the most profitable in the country thanks to a policy of shifting funds and resources from urban hospitals. Only 14 percent of rural hospitals operated at a loss and none shut down over the same time period....

Just refusing the Medicaid expansion alone doesn't completely account for the hundreds of rural hospital closures across Republican-controlled states. For one thing, medical treatment and technology has gotten more advanced. Dr. Nancy Dickey, president of the Rural and Community Health Institute at Texas A&M, told Gatehouse, "Most of what we knew how to do in the 1970s and 1980s could be done reasonably well in small towns. But scientific developments and advances in neurosurgery, microscopic surgery and the like required a great deal more technology and a bigger population to support the array of technology specialists." As a result, the number of services that rural hospitals offered started to shrink, while at the same time rural populations dwindled as both jobs and young people moved away. What's left were older, poorer populations that needed more medical care and had less money to pay for it. In that situation, hospitals can't generate enough revenue to stay open, let alone enough to pay the salaries of even new doctors, who carry an average of $200,000 in student debt.

Still, if the state legislatures and governors had accepted the money, billions of dollars could have gone to improving insurance coverage and propping up the hospitals' bottom lines. In a health-care industry where the average CEO pay is $18 million a year, hospitals have to produce a lot of money to justify their existence to shareholders. The Medicaid expansion was one of the few lifelines available to rural Americans, and their politicians snubbed it.

https://www.gq.com/story/rural-hospitals-closing-in-red-states

[wasupaloopa]

9. Those hospitals were not doing well before Medicaid expantion

Medicaid only covers poor over the age of 18 and children.

Before the ACA Medicaid paid only 50% of costs.

With the expansion more people were covered and it paid 100% the first year and then 10% less each subsequent year.

It did give money to cover indigent patients that before were not covered.

[Ohiogal]

10. Ohio accepted Medicaid expansion.

[ReformedGOPer]

11. Why do all Republicans (except the wealthy) always vote against their own interests?

[Hoyt]

7. Sounds like losses, lower reimbursement, some fraud issues and kickbacks to physicians, and

hospitals competing, rather than cooperating to share services.

""OVMC, EORH, and their physician practices have lost more than $37 million over the past 2 years as they struggled to overcome declining volumes, declining reimbursement, and the substantial harm caused by the conduct alleged by the government in United States of America ex. rel. Louis Longo v. Wheeling Hospital, Inc., R & V Associates, LTD., and Ronald L. Violi, United States District Court for the Northern District of West Virginia Case No. 5:19-cv-00192-JPB," reads the statement from Mr. Dunmyer.

"Officials decided to initiate the closure process after failing to secure a strategic partner or buyer for the hospitals. Mr. Dunmyer said the search involved discussions with more than 15 health systems and providers, according to The Intelligencer."


https://www.theintelligencer.net/news/top-headlines/2019/08/ovmc-and-eorh-to-close-ceo-cites-37m-loss/



The Kickbacks sound like a pretty big issue.

"The whistleblower lawsuit filed in Pennsylvania by Louis Longo, former executive vice president of Wheeling Hospital in West Virginia who now lives in Pittsburgh, alleges the hospital, CEO Ronald Violi and the hospital's management firm, Pittsburgh-based R&V Associates, defrauded Medicare and Medicaid through a scheme involving excessive compensation to doctors. The qui tam lawsuit, joined by the Justice Department, claims the payments allegedly were based on the volume or value of patient referrals and the money paid in patient treatment."

"The excessive compensation had been part of a scheme for the hospital to achieve "monopolistic power and dominating market share" in the Ohio Valley region, the lawsuit said. Defendants allegedly violated the Stark Law, which prohibits referrals and improper financial relationships between doctors of Medicare patients and hospitals, as well as the Anti-Kickback Statute and False Claims Act."

https://pennrecord.com/stories/512661237-whistleblower-s-lawsuit-alleging-scheme-at-wheeling-hospital-defrauded-medicare-transferred-to-west-virginia


In some areas of the countries, closing hospitals convert to a freestanding ER to handle accidents, acute illnesses and stabilize patients.

The truth is, we have more hospitals than needed in this country because so much care is now provided on an outpatient basis. It's sad.

[appalachiablue]

12. Healthcare is increasingly becoming a luxury in the US, as one

member here said recently. And the American ranking for healthcare and outcomes is dismal compared to other advanced nations.

Smaller community and rural hospitals have been closing or merging even before the ACA, sorry to say. There was a local politician from No. Carolina fighting this happening in his area on a TV news show c. 2012 for just one example.

The US mental health system which Gov. Reagan began breaking down in CA is completely inadequate and the impacts severe.