Several hospitals in Mississippi, most notably the University of Mississippi Medical Center, have resigned their membership in the state’s hospital association in the past week.
None of the departing institutions — others include Pascagoula-based Singing River Health System, Memorial Hospital in Gulfport and a regional health system based in Lucedale — gave specific reasons for their withdrawal.
The Magnolia Tribune, which reported UMMC’s resignation, obtained a letter from the medical center to the Mississippi Hospital Association that cited “recurring behavior including insufficient transparency around decision making, a misaligned strategic vision and lack of effective communication.”
“While we see value in MHA as an organization, we have lost confidence in the current leadership,” UMMC’s letter added.
Letters to the hospital association from the Pascagoula, Gulfport and Lucedale hospitals said the same thing, according to the Mississippi Today website.
The Gulfport hospital’s CEO wrote, “Based upon recent actions, I have lost confidence in the association and fear that in the near future, MHA’s current leadership and vision will detract from the strength and vision to which we have all contributed over the past several years.”
Maybe this problem has been building for a while. The past three years have been brutal on hospitals. Most have reported operating losses during the covid-19 pandemic.
These losses — caused in part by rising expenses for employees and supplies, along with changes in federal reimbursements for medical care — have forced some hospitals to reduce the medical services they offer. Reliable reports say the finances of a number of hospitals in the state put them at risk of closing.
Or it may be that the timing of the resignations points to at least one decision by the hospital association: to have its political action committee donate $250,000 to Brandon Presley, the Democratic candidate for governor.
The PAC also plans to give $100,000 to incumbent Republican Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann. But there apparently will be nothing for Gov. Tate Reeves, a consistent opponent of expanding Medicaid even though adding the working poor to the federal program would send more money to Mississippi hospitals.
The hospital association president and CEO defended the Presley contribution, saying he’s the only candidate for governor that has supported hospitals — meaning that Presley favors the expansion of Medicaid.
At one point a few years ago, the hospital association offered to have its members pay the state’s extra cost of expanding Medicaid. It’s unlikely that is possible now, given the hospitals’ financial struggles. But it’s worth noting that nobody resigned from the association over the issue back then.
Still, the hospital association PAC’s decision to make such a substantial gift to Presley — it’s got to be one of the its largest-ever contributions to a single candidate — had to ruffle some feathers. That is an unwise long-term strategy.
Polls keep saying it’s a fairly close race between Reeves and Presley, but Mississippi’s election trends over the past two decades are strongly Republican. No one has put forth any credible evidence that this dominance is at risk.
In this instance, the hospital association’s decision to support candidates who support hospitals could produce a harsh reaction from Reeves and other Republicans. The people who run hospitals are smart enough to know this, and some are getting out of the line of fire.
— Jack Ryan, McComb Enterprise-Journal
