Becker's Hospital Review

11 CFO / FINANCE New York public hospital will go 'belly up' without changes, chair warns By Alia Paavola T he public benefit organization that runs Nas- sau University Medical Center in East Mead- ow, N.Y., is at risk of going belly up without significant operational changes, Newsday reported. NuHealth Chair Robert Detor, appointed in January, said at a board meeting that NuHealth could run out of money by March 2021, given the company's in- creasingly poor financial picture. "I came to the determination that there is a possibil- ity that this hospital could close if we don't change how we're functioning and modify this business plat- form," Mr. Detor said, according to Newsday. "Unless we do something, unless we change how we oper- ate, we are going to go belly up." NuHealth lost $28 million in the first half of 2020. Mr. Detor said the board agreed last year to a four- year labor contract that provides 8 percent raises to union members, but it hasn't figured out how to pay for them. n CMS terminates Missouri hospital's Medicare contract By Ayla Ellison CMS has ended its provider agreement with Pinnacle Regional Hospital in Boonville, Mo. The Medicare contract termination came after the hospital abruptly shut down in January. The Medicare program will not make payments to the hospital for services provided after July 15, according to an involuntary termination notice published by CMS. Pinnacle Regional Hospital, formerly known as Cooper County Memorial Hospital, cited the need for costly repairs as the rea- son for shutting down. It closed about a month after the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services inspected the hospi- tal and cited it for sterile processing procedures. The health de- partment ordered the hospital to stop performing surgery until the sterile processing unit was upgraded. Hospital officials initially said they were working with the state to rectify the situation, but they ultimately decided to close the facility instead of making the repairs. The hospital is owned by Pinnacle Healthcare. The company closed its other hospital in Overland Park, Kan., and its affiliated clinics in April. Pinnacle has not announced plans to sell or re- open either facility. n 15 rural hospital closures in 2020 By Ayla Ellison N early 1 in 5 Americans live in rural ar- eas and depend on their local hospital for care. Over the past 10 years, 131 of those hospitals have closed. More than 30 states have seen at least one rural hospital shut down since 2010, and the closures are heavily clustered in the South, ac- cording to data from the Cecil G. Sheps Cen- ter for Health Services Research. Listed below are the 15 rural hospitals that have closed this year, as tracked by the Sheps Center. For the purposes of its analysis, the Sheps Center defined a hospital closure as the cessation in the provision of inpatient services. "We follow the convention of the Office of Inspector General that a closed hospital is 'a facility that stopped providing general, short- term, acute inpatient care,'" reads a statement on the Sheps Center's website. "We did not consider a hospital closed if it: merged with, or was sold to, another hospital but the physi- cal plant continued to provide inpatient acute care, converted to critical access status, or both closed and reopened during the same calendar year and at the same physical location." As of Aug. 31, all the facilities listed below had stopped providing inpatient care. Some of them still offer other services, including outpa- tient, emergency, urgent or primary care. 1. Bluefield (W.Va.) Regional Medical Center *Provides urgent or emergency care 2. Central Hospital of Bowie (Texas) 3. Cumberland River Hospital (Celina, Tenn.) 4. Decatur County General Hospital (Par- sons, Tenn.) 5. Edward W. McCready Memorial Hospital (Crisfield, Md.) *Provides urgent or emergency care 6. Mayo Clinic Health System-Springfield (Minn.) *Provides outpatient/primary care 7. Mountain View Regional Hospital (Nor- ton, Va.) *Operates as a nursing or rehabilitation facility 8. Pinnacle Regional Hospital (Boonville, Mo.) 9. Shands Lake Shore Regional Medical Cen- ter (Lake City, Fla.) 10. Shands Live Oak (Fla.) Regional Medical Center *Provides urgent or emergency care 11. Shands Starke (Fla.) Regional Medical Center *Provides urgent or emergency care 12. St. Luke's Cushing Hospital (Leavenworth, Kan.) *Provides urgent or emergency care 13. Sumner Community Hospital (Wellington, Kan.) 14. UPMC Susquehanna Sunbury (Pa.) *Provides outpatient/primary care 15. Williamson (W.Va.) Memorial Hospital n

• Cover