A City's Only Hospital Cut Services. How Locals Fought Back.

Cross posting from GD https://www.democraticunderground.com/100215330443

When the only hospital in a small central Wyoming city stopped delivering babies and cut back on surgeries, local residents sought to start their own. The fight that ensued now stretches to Washington, and is shining an uncomfortable light on one of the country’s biggest hospital chains and its private-equity owner.

LifePoint Health Inc., backed by Apollo Global Management Inc., controls the only hospital in working-class Riverton, Wyo. After LifePoint merged Riverton’s hospital with another facility it owns in the city of Lander, 30 miles away, it began consolidating the hospitals’ services. With many in Riverton worried that cutbacks would hurt the city’s future and some concerned over Lander’s care, local business and community leaders launched an effort to build a new hospital instead. They say they have secured several million dollars in donations for the effort, including land for the proposed hospital from the Eastern Shoshone Native American tribe.

Today, the group is one step away from achieving its goal of securing $40 million of low-interest loans from the Agriculture Department. LifePoint is trying to scupper the efforts by lobbying the Biden administration and Wyoming’s senators to oppose the project... Riverton’s effort highlights the struggles in rural healthcare nationwide and the clashes between communities and for-profit chains that own small-town hospitals across the country. Financial pressure on hospitals caused by the pandemic has further raised tensions.

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Private-equity groups, which poured more than $200 billion into North American health investments over the past decade, have at times exacerbated these tensions. Lucrative returns, an aging population and other factors made healthcare companies attractive targets. But private-equity strategies, which can include the aggressive use of debt to fund dividends or selling off local assets to clean up balance sheets, can deepen conflicts with small communities such as Riverton. Around 24% of U.S. hospitals are owned by for-profit investors, which includes private equity, according to the American Hospital Association. That is up from 16% in 2000.

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More than 130 rural hospitals have closed nationwide since 2010. A concern in Riverton is that traveling farther for healthcare puts people at risk, particularly in a state where roads can be impassable in winter. Research has linked hospital closures to higher mortality rates for patients with time-sensitive conditions such as heart attacks and strokes.

More..

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-citys-only-hospital-cut-services-how-locals-fought-back-11618133400 (subscription)