Bootheel Hospital’s Struggles
Raise Concerns About Access to Health Care
Written by: James Doyle
of the St. Louis Post Dispatch
The article being reviewed is one article and a 10 part
series conducted by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. This particular article in the
series examines healthcare struggles in the Bootheel of the state of Missouri.
The article states that a person living in El Salvador has a longer life
expectancy than a person living Pemiscot County Missouri. The Bootheel County
has a population of roughly about 18,000 people. The county is plagued with
healthcare issues such as diabetes and heart ailments. Pemiscot County has the
highest rate of infant mortality in state of Missouri in one of the highest
anywhere in the United States. The only hospital located in the County is the
Pemiscot County Memorial Hospital; however with the recent denial of Medicaid
expansion in state of Missouri it is highly likely that the Pemiscot County
Memorial Hospital will have to shut its doors. Without an expansion of the Medicaid program in the state
of Missouri which according to Kerry Noble the hospital’s chief financial
officer of the hospital that the hospital will not be able to provide care for
his patients. A majority of the patients serviced by Pemiscot County Memorial
Hospital are individuals that either have insufficient health care coverage are
no insurance coverage at all. During the late part of 2012 Noble told the
Missouri House of Representatives that the expansion of Medicaid was necessary
for rural hospitals to be able to keep their doors open and to continue to
provide service. This was met by direct skepticism by Missouri House Speaker
Tim Jones a prominent Republican in the state of Missouri and also a fierce
opponent of the affordable care act also, referred to as Obama care. House
Speaker Jones said that Noble’s comment was nothing more than fear mongering.
In 1990 the United Healthcare Foundation ranked Missouri
24th in the nation in healthcare coverage. The latest
rankings by
the foundation place, Missouri at 45th out of 50 in the United
States. One of the issues brought out in the article was a factor is a lack of
the number of physicians in the rule Missouri bootheel counties that can
provide adequate health care for the residents. Physicians a do practice in the
Missouri bootheel counties have to be everything from a cardiologist to the
neurologist to an orthopedic doctor. Pemiscot County’s sickly population spends
a lot of time in the hospital. Residents of Pemiscot County are hospitalized
more than twice as often as the average Missouri resident, according to the
Delta Regional Authority. The hospital inpatient days per 1,000 residents in
Pemiscot County is 1,858; the Missouri average is 719 days; the U.S. average is
643 days. The fact that the
Republican politician’s in the state of Missouri chose not to increase Medicaid
is a direct slap in the face of the underinsured and uninsured and poor
residence in state of Missouri. I think as human beings and also as social
workers we have a mandate to be advocates for those who are underrepresented or
not represented. It is really upsetting to me to think of young children or
elderly people and those with mental health issues in
Pemiscot County cannot obtain the necessary in life sustaining medical
treatment that in my opinion as American citizens they all deserve to have.
I agree, Scott. I don't understand people who view expansion of medical care as coddling people. To me it makes perfect sense that if we allow people to have basic care, they may not need catastrophic care.
ReplyDeleteI do see some of the abuse of the medicaid system, though. Many of my young moms use the emergency room because it's more convenient than taking time off work to go to the doctor the next day. But doctors are part of that - when my daughter was a toddler and she was on the medical card, her doctor told me to go to the ER for her ear infection, because he couldn't get her in that day. I was shocked; I'd never heard of such a thing. I'm sure he'd never have suggested it to a patient with private insurance.
It seems like doctors and nurses who tell their patients to go to the ER do so because they feel that they are putting the health and well-being of their patients above all else. If the system is openly being used in that manner, it should stand to reason that there's a problem with the system itself. Good write up, Scott! Social and health services in rural areas seem to be just as complicated as it would be in a metropolitan area.
ReplyDeleteThis was a very informative article and gives a lot of descriptive insight into the kind of struggles that rural counties face regarding health care. I've never heard of Pemiscot County in Missouri but it sounds like a very sad place to live. The residents are facing enough struggles as it is, and would be at an unspeakable loss if the only hospital in the area closes. I also don't understand why the expansion of Medicaid is seen as such a big deal that no one wants to budge on it when so many of the residents there are clearly struggling to be healthy.
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