Georgiana Medical Center in Butler County, Alabama: Facebook

Staff Report –

Another rural hospital in Alabama will close its doors on March 31 thanks to a lack of state support of federal funding for health care.

Butler County, Alabama: Wikipedia:

Georgiana Medical Center in rural Butler County will become the 14th hospital to shut down in the state on March 31, according to an announcement from the hospital’s operator, Ivy Creek, blaming “the current difficult financial environment faced by rural healthcare providers.”

Patients will be directed to LV Stabler Memorial Hospital in Greenville, also in Butler County in South Alabama near the Florida line, a rural county with a population of 20,947 people, according to the Census of 2010. Ivy Creek says its rural health clinics will continue to operate in a merger with LV Stabler.

“The rising costs of healthcare coupled with the cuts in reimbursement have made it impractical to maintain financial viability with two hospitals operating in Butler County,” Ivy Creek CEO Mike Bruce said in announcing the move. “The partnering of the two organizations is the optimal way to continue to provide overall high quality healthcare for the residents of Butler County as well as the surrounding areas.”

Officials from Ivy Creek, LV Stabler and the city of Greenville officially announced the merger and hospital closing at a news conference on Tuesday, Feb. 12.

U.S. Senator Doug Jones responded to the news citing the rising cost of health care and cuts in federal and state reimbursements as the driving factors behind the closing.

Senator Jones, a Democrat from Birmingham, has been a vocal advocate for rural health care through his position on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, but so far has failed to convince Republican Governor Kay or the Republicans in control of both houses of the Legislature to accept federal funding to expand Medicaid, which could have saved most if not all of the 14 hospitals in the state from the chopping block.

“For years, our rural hospitals have been warning public officials about the financial cliff they faced in large part as a result of unfair Medicare reimbursement rates and the refusal to expand Medicaid in Alabama,” Senator Jones said in a press release issued Tuesday, the day the announcement came out about the closing.

“Thirteen hospitals have closed in our state since 2011. Seven of those have been in rural areas,” Jones said. “How many more rural health care providers need to close for meaningful action to be taken? This should be a wake-up call – actually, another wake up call.”

He said politicians and the people in Washington and Montgomery all share a responsibility to take action – “to expand Medicaid, to fight for wage index reform, to find opportunities to lower the cost of health care – and to find common ground to best serve communities.”

According to Danne Howard, Policy Director at the Alabama Hospitals Association, about 88 percent of the state’s rural hospitals are operating “in the red” and aren’t currently receiving reimbursements that can cover the cost of delivering care.

Senator Jones has consistently advocated for Medicaid expansion in the state, which would bring $2 billion in state taxpayer dollars back to Alabama, provide coverage to approximately 360,000 Alabamians, and help put hospitals back on a sustainable financial path.

In addition to fighting for Medicaid expansion, Senator Jones has also called for reforms to the Medicare Wage Index, under which Alabama currently has the lowest reimbursement rate of any state in the nation, he said. Alabama hospitals are reimbursed for their labor at a rate that is just 67 percent of the national average, while some states, like California, get well over 100 percent of the national average.

It was Republican Governor Robert Bentley who refused to accept $1 billion a year in federal funding for health care in the state beginning in 2012, the year he won reelection by fighting the offer from President Barack Obama to provide the funding under the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. Bentley won reelection in part for not accepting this funding, but he was removed from office anyway for financial misdealing related to a staff sex scandal.

Alabama Governor Robert Bentley Resigns Rather Than Face Impeachment, Jail Time