JACKSON, Miss.—Struggling Mississippi hospitals will receive millions in financial aid starting in July 2023 if lawmakers pass Senate Bill 2372 and the governor signs it into law, Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann said at a press conference on Jan. 18, 2023.
Sen. Kevin Blackwell, R-Southaven, is sponsoring the bill, which would establish the Mississippi Hospital Sustainability Grant Program. The lieutenant governor described it as a short-term boost for financially strained hospitals across the state. Mississippi State Health Officer Dr. Daniel Edney told lawmakers in November 2022 that 38 rural hospitals, or about 54% of all rural hospitals in the state, are in danger of financial collapse.
“We’re proposing an $80 million infusion into rural hospitals based upon their bed count, whether they’re critical access, do they have an emergency room—those kinds of things will be part of the allocation of these resources,” Hosemann said Wednesday.
The bill requires each hospital receiving the funds to submit a report to the lieutenant governor and the Mississippi speaker of the house describing the “overall patient census” by Dec. 1, 2023.
“It will require them, the hospitals themselves, to give us back information on who they’re serving and what services they are rendering,” Hosemann said. “And that’s really important for the long term.”
Medicaid Expansion Not In Plan
“The lack of access to health care for many Mississippians is currently a crisis” that “is getting worse,” the Mississippi State Medical Association said in a Jan. 3 press release.
The association said hospitals are failing because the State has refused to use federal funds to expand Medicaid, citing a “sizable gap that exists for working Mississippians who cannot afford private insurance, yet whose income is too much to qualify for Mississippi Medicaid.”
In November 2022, Mississippi State Health Officer Dr. Daniel Edney warned lawmakers that, out of the total number of rural hospitals in the state, 38 were at risk of collapse. AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis
Because hospitals are required to treat people who do not have insurance and who cannot afford to pay for services, they face financial difficulties “that even the most successful private