7/8/2009 6:00:00 PM EDITORIAL/Time's up on the hospital
The firm leasing Madison County's hospital will break ground next month on a
$42 million facility off Interstate 55 in Canton at no cost to taxpayers.
Under a 40-year, $8 million lease agreement, Health Management Associates of Naples, Fla., pays Madison County the equivalent of about $200,000 annually to lease the hospital.
Neshoba County has been struggling for more than half a decade to replace its aging hospital with still no plan in sight.
Neshoba County pays Quorum Health Resources about $300,000 annually to manage the hospital.
As unemployment here soars to record highs, perhaps it's dawning on folks that the hospital should have long ago been a top economic development priority.
"We have to have a new hospital," Dr. Walt Willis told the Philadelphia Rotary Club in April, more than five years after he first made that point to business leaders.
Constructing a new county hospital - not piecemealing in phases - is essential to providing the kind of quality medical care that will grow the hospital's market share and enable it to become an even bigger engine for economic development.
This week, Quorum and the Board of Supervisors agreed to settle a $22,000 dispute over a claim the firm "tortuously interfered" with Neshoba County's efforts to expand the hospital by denying access to data for a demographic study.
A $21 million Medicaid windfall could allow the county to borrow monies and finance the construction of a new facility, but hospital trustees are still awaiting the results of a debt analysis study seven months after the windfall was announced.
Time is running out for the trustees and Quorum - along with the sick and injured.
Either build a new hospital or consider an alternative such as Canton's lease arrangement that won't cost taxpayers a dime.
