Senator: Small hospitals must get patients to get funding

A new method for federal health care funding will force small, rural attract more patients if they want to keep pace, state Sen. Bret Allain told the St. Mary Parish Council on Sept. 28.

“If you don’t have the volume, if [patients] go elsewhere, so will the money,” Allain, R-Franklin, told the council.

The senator spoke during the public comment portion of the regular council meeting. He began with a defense against what he said were accusations that he was opposing an appointment to the St. Mary Parish Hospital Service District No. 2 board.

Allain, who sits on that board, denied that he was opposing the appointment.

And then he talked about the challenges facing small, rural hospitals, including Franklin Foundation Hospital, which is being renamed the Bayou Bend Health System, and Morgan City’s Ochsner St. Mary.

He’s not alone in sounding the warning. A Chartis Center for Rural Health analysis says hospitals will begin to fail after federal COVID funding expires next year. The analysis says 453 rural hospitals, a quarter of the total, are vulnerable.

Rural hospitals serve populations that tend to be older, sicker and poorer and have less access to other health care services than people in metro areas, the analysis said.

Since 2010, according to the Poynter Institute, 138 rural hospitals have closed.

The federal funding landscape also will play a role in small hospital survival, according to Allain.

He called the 2014 expansion of Medicaid, part of the Obamacare legislation, a “game changer” because it allowed Medicaid recipients to seek care at a wider range of facilities.

Now federal health care funding is being changed so that it no longer bases payments to hospitals on the number of low-income patients they have served historically. Instead, Allain said, the funding will follow the patients.

So small hospitals will have to compete for patients in order to secure their federal funding, he said.

That’s one motivation behind the recent rebranding at Franklin Foundation Hospital.

The Franklin hospital is also the site for a new $19 million, 60,000- square-foot Wellness Center.

The focus there will be on exercise and therapy to prevent more serious conditions, saving money that would otherwise be spent on more expensive care.

The project is being financed with state and federal grants. Allain has said in the past that experts will be watching the Wellness Center to see if spending more Medicaid funds on preventive care will be an effective use of the money.