A year ago, Clayton County voters rescued an ailing Southern Regional Medical Center, approving a $50 million bailout package as part of a Special Local Option Sales Tax.
The county pitched in another $617,000 a month to help defray costs racked up from uncompensated care, sagging revenues and other problems. But hospital officials are back again this year looking to the county for more help.
This year, however, the county has allocated no money for the 331-bed hospital in the proposed fiscal year 2016 budget.
The proposed county budget of $182.2 million is a 4 percent decrease over spending last year.
“The decrease results primarily from the exclusion of funds for financial assistance to supplement the cost of the indigent medical care at Southern Regional Medical Center,” the county’s Chief Financial Officer Ramona Thurmond Bivins explained in a letter to county commissioners accompanying the proposed budget.
“Last year, we used our reserves to provide funding for the hospital. That was a one-time thing,” Bivins told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “We can’t do that every year.”
Hospital and county officials are “still in discussions” over how much it would take in county help to keep the facility running, hospital spokeswoman Claudia Hall said Monday.
Going without more financial support from the county puts the hospital in a “untenable position,” Southern Regional Chief Executive Officer Kim Ryan said.
“The hospital can not survive as it does currently unless we receive external financial support,” Ryan said.
Hall stopped short of saying the Riverdale facility will close if it doesn’t get the money, but noted “we’d have to re-evaluate what level of serve could be offered.”
If the hospital were to close, it would create a medical desert for the southside of Atlanta, which has smaller hospitals in neighboring Henry and Fayette counties that could not absorb Southern Regional’s patients.
While the Clayton County’s economy is improving and home values are going up, the county has other obligations.
“We can’t continue to sustain the hospital out of the general fund balance. We did what we could last year to keep them operating,” Chairman Jeff Turner said. “So they were able to keep the doors open another year.”
Southern Regional has been saddled with an unending stream of patients who can’t pay, hospital officials have said. At the same time, many paying patients with private insurance are going elsewhere for care, and cuts in federal and state funding have exacerbated the hospital’s problems, they added.
County officials stepped in by giving the hospital the monthly payments in the current budget to help partially offset losses related to uncompensated care, as well as $1.6 million to replace heating and cooling equipment that is essential to hospital operations. The county’s monthly payments end June 30.
The $50 million aid package from the SPLOST was to pay off some hospital bonds and free up about $3 million a year money for hospital operations. Earlier this year, the hospital cut 80 jobs as part of a major restructuring.
“There is still time to ensure that the hospital remains open,” Ryan said when asked if the hospital was in immediate danger of closing.
Hospital and county officials, as well as Southern Regional’s partner Emory Healthcare System, are looking for solutions. The hospital and county have been in talks for several months trying to hammer out a plan.
“The board of commissioners are doing everything in our power to help find a solution,” Turner said. “We do know time is of the essence.”
One possible option, Turner said, is a millage increase. Based on preliminary data, a mill could raise about $6 million, according to the county’s chief appraiser Rodney McDaniel.
Prior to last year’s SPLOST aid package, the county provided financial help to the hospital in 2007 and 2008, totaling nearly $7 million. In 2010, the county backed some now defeased bonds but did not give direct aid to the hospital.
Approving the 2016 budget as it stands now isn’t a done deal, Turner said. The commission could postpone approval and work on an amended budget that could include money for the hospital, he said.
The public will get to weigh in on the issue at a public hearing on the budget — the second — at Tuesday’s meeting.
The commission meets at 7 p.m. at the Clayton County Administration building, 112 Smith St., in Jonesboro.
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