'These hospitals need help': Emergency funding to small rural hospitals passes committee
Jan. 25—Insurance premiums up to nine times higher than just a few years ago.
Costs of salaries, medications and hospital supplies soaring, while income from Medicaid matching funds drop.
A New Mexico woman taking her father to a Texas hospital in an emergency because there were no doctors at the hospital nearby.
Lawmakers on Thursday heard dramatic testimony about the financial straits of small rural hospitals around the state during a short committee hearing for Senate Bill 52, a proposal to give such facilities $51 million in emergency funding.
Tammie Chavez, the CEO of Union County General Hospital in Clayton, said cost increases and matching fund decreases are threatening leaders' abilities to keep the doors open at her facility — which serves an area that is nearly 50% Medicare patients with relatively lower numbers of Medicaid patients, unlike much of New Mexico.
"The next nearest hospital to us is in Raton, which is 84 miles away," Chavez told members of the Senate Indian, Rural and Cultural Affairs Committee on Thursday. "As a nurse, I know that when you have a heart attack or a stroke or a trauma or anything on that road on that road, that you're not going to make it to the next hospital."
Mike Miller, a lobbyist for Roosevelt General Hospital in Portales and Nor-Lea Hospital District in Lovington, said reimbursement rates have not kept pace with inflation.
"This is a stopgap measure that I think is very important to keep the doors open in these hospitals," said Miller, who is also mayor of Portales.
Sen. Pat Woods, R-Broadview, who co-sponsored the measure with fellow Republican Rep. Randall T. Pettigrew of Lovington, said he hopes the measure will give hospitals immediate relief while other solutions are in the works. Woods and Sen. George Muñoz, D-Gallup, have proposed another measure, Senate Bill 161, that would fund a temporary $50 million subsidy program for small hospitals to help cover some losses, including increases on medical malpractice premiums.
"We are in dire need of these health centers out there in the rural areas," Woods said. "... These hospitals need help, and I'm trying to figure out how to do that."
According to a fiscal analysis of the measure, the bill would give funding to:
* Alta Vista Regional Medical Center in Las Vegas, N.M.
* Holy Cross Medical Center in Taos.
* Cibola General Hospital in Grants.
* Dr. Dan C. Trigg Memorial Hospital in Tucumcari.
* Guadalupe County Hospital in Santa Rosa.
* Lincoln County Medical Center in Ruidoso.
* Mimbres Memorial Hospital in Deming.
* Miners Colfax Medical Center in Raton.
* Nor-Lea Hospital District in Lovington.
* Rehoboth McKinley Christian Hospital in Gallup.
* Roosevelt General Hospital in Portales.
* Sierra Vista Hospital in Truth or Consequences.
Woods said Union County General Hospital also would qualify.
Members of the committee passed the measure on a 5-0 vote. Some, including Sen. Joshua Sanchez, R-Bosque, asked why the bill wasn't for more than $51 million, a figure Woods said was a "shot in the dark."
"Can we add more to it?" Sanchez asked.
