3 new hospitals serving many rural patients say they're in trouble because feds won't give them full pandemic relief

The lobby of Thomasville Regional Medical Center

Three hospitals that serve many rural patients "say they are missing out on millions in federal pandemic relief money because the facilities are so new they lack full financial statements from before the crisis to prove how much it cost them," Jay Reeves of The Associated Press reports. The hospitals are Thomasville Regional Medical Center, "offering state-of-the-art medicine that was previously unavailable in a poor, isolated part of Alabama;" Rock Regional Hospital southeast of Wichita; and Three Crosses Hospital in Las Cruces, New Mexico.

"In Thomasville, located in timber country about 95 miles north of the Gulf Coast port of Mobile, hospital officials have worked more than a year to convince federal officials they should have gotten $8.2 million through the CARES Act, not just the $1 million they received. With a total debt of $35 million, the quest gets more urgent each day, said Curtis James, the chief executive officer," AP reports. James told Reeves, "No hospital can sustain itself without getting the CARES Act money that everybody else got."

The Kansas hospital "is due as much as $15.8 million, officials said, but because it only opened in April 2019 and lacks complete pre-pandemic financial statements, it has received just a little more than $985,000," Reeves reports. The New Mexico hospital "piled up a staggering $16.8 million in losses in just three quarters while receiving only $28,000 in aid, said Landon Fulmer, a Washington lobbyist working with all three hospitals to obtain additional funding."

The U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration can't cover all hospital losses, spokesman Chris Lundquist told AP. He said hospitals can appeal or seek a supplemental appropriation. Officials in Thomasville are trying to leverage congressional influence. "They've been assured they're going to be taken care of. But the fact is, when you're dealing with government entities, you don't have the money until you have the money," said Dr. Don Williamson, president of the Alabama Hospital Association, who said he has contacted the White House for help.

Thomasville, in the Black Belt, lost its previous hospital more than 10 years ago. "Officials worked for years to secure a new hospital so residents wouldn't have to drive 90 minutes for high-tech services such as digital imaging, full surgical options, echocardiograms, 3-D mammography and more," Reeves reports. "Using a partnership between the city and a municipal healthcare authority, Thomasville Regional secured federal funding from the Department of Agriculture and opened on March 3, 2020, before cases of Covid-19 caught fire in the rural South."