Rural hospitals largest category to lean on PPP loans
Rural hospitals in particular leaned heavily on PPP loans. As a result, medical facilities were the largest category of PPP borrowers in the state. Medical businesses represented the largest percentage of Mississippi loans by amount, 14.8%. Nationwide, medical businesses received about 10% on average.
Many of them were in dire straits before the pandemic. Data from the Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform lists Mississippi as having the third largest number of rural hospitals at risk of closure, 41, and it ranks the second worst in the nation in terms of average profit margins. A 2015 report by Mississippi State University listed nine Mississippi hospitals at very high risk of closure, and five rural hospitals in the state have already closed, according to data from the Chartis Center for Rural Health.
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Almost half of critical access hospitals star ratings went down this year, and about two-thirds of all U.S. CAH s didn t even get a star, raising questions about whether CMS new methodology is a more accurate picture of quality, and if the system is even working for these small hospitals.
Take Fulton County Health Center in Ohio, which went from four stars last year to one star this year, and is part of a larger trend. Forty-seven percent of CAHs went down at least one star this year, compared to 22% of acute care hospitals.
At FCHC their rate of hip and knee replacement complications was below average in the safety and care grouping. All of the other measures reported were better or at average. FCHC CEO Patti Finn said her quality team is reviewing their data on hip and knee replacements, but they have not found out what exactly caused the problem.
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Medical workers with Delta Health Center prepare to vaccinate people in Leland, Miss., last week. In some places, rural hospital workers have been slow to get the vaccine themselves. Spencer Platt/Getty Images
President Biden on Tuesday is set to announce new steps to reach rural Americans in the push to get as many people as possible vaccinated for the coronavirus, a White House official tells NPR. This emphasis comes as rural hospitals are raising alarms about the pace of vaccination even among their own employees.
The Biden administration is moving into a new phase of its vaccination campaign, one where it knows doctors and health care professionals are often more persuasive than the government.
Spencer Platt / Getty Images
President Biden on Tuesday is set to announce new steps to reach rural Americans in the push to get as many people as possible vaccinated for the coronavirus, a White House official tells NPR. This emphasis comes as rural hospitals are raising alarms about the pace of vaccination even among their own employees.
The Biden administration is moving into a new phase of its vaccination campaign, one where it knows doctors and health care professionals are often more persuasive than the government.
So it has prioritized a list of doctors enrolled in the vaccine system based on a social vulnerability index used by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention including doctors in many rural communities and has been asking state government to send vaccine doses to those doctors, the official said.