I live in a small Midwestern town and work at the hospital in the Business Office. I have watched as the major industries in this town have gone under since they were tied to the auto industry. I watched as one of our two grocery stores closed because of the economy taking even more jobs with it. Our only real place to shop in town in the local Wal-Mart otherwise known as “sorry we don’t carry what you want and we don’t do customer service.” I watched as the hospital cut jobs, cut all our hours, stopped matching retirement contributions, and put a freeze on raises. The town doesn’t have the money to fix the sidewalks which are crumbling or the pot holes in the street because of all the rain. It is a town in crises.
As a county hospital we can not turn away anyone from the Emergency Room. The town has no clinic and the local doctors are bailing out and moving away faster then we can get new ones in to replace them. Many of the doctors remaining are at retirement age and cutting back on hours or just plain retiring. Our family doctor is cutting back his hours and it is hard to get in to see him even for an emergency. There is no place else for people to go when they are sick but the hospital Emergency Room.
One of the biggest problems facing our hospital and many other small hospitals like us is the lack of money coming in. Insurance companies are stalling about paying the bills. The number of people who are either uninsured or under-insured is increasing every month as there are more and more job losses in our town. There is just no where around here for people to work and with the loss of jobs comes the loss of health care benefits.
The State’s Medicaid Office has issued a new policy to cut back on Emergency Room visits that they don’t consider an emergency. It doesn’t matter what we have to spend in the hospital for us to treat people that we are mandated by law to see they are going to only pay $25.00 to reimburse us for doing we have to do by State law. I know the money is tight on the State level too but this is just ridiculous.
I imagine a lot of what we are seeing in the Emergency Room is stress induced illnesses. A lot of the illnesses we see of the people working at the hospital are probably exacerbated by stress. I know my own health has been worse lately and a lot of it is probably due to working in a job where we are pressured to try and get money in and no way to do it. We can’t force the insurance companies to pay and they are using every excuse in the world not to. The State and Federal Governments are making it harder to get payment from them. We are writing off hundreds of thousands of dollars in bad debts.
As a county hospital we can not turn away anyone from the Emergency Room. The town has no clinic and the local doctors are bailing out and moving away faster then we can get new ones in to replace them. Many of the doctors remaining are at retirement age and cutting back on hours or just plain retiring. Our family doctor is cutting back his hours and it is hard to get in to see him even for an emergency. There is no place else for people to go when they are sick but the hospital Emergency Room.
One of the biggest problems facing our hospital and many other small hospitals like us is the lack of money coming in. Insurance companies are stalling about paying the bills. The number of people who are either uninsured or under-insured is increasing every month as there are more and more job losses in our town. There is just no where around here for people to work and with the loss of jobs comes the loss of health care benefits.
The State’s Medicaid Office has issued a new policy to cut back on Emergency Room visits that they don’t consider an emergency. It doesn’t matter what we have to spend in the hospital for us to treat people that we are mandated by law to see they are going to only pay $25.00 to reimburse us for doing we have to do by State law. I know the money is tight on the State level too but this is just ridiculous.
I imagine a lot of what we are seeing in the Emergency Room is stress induced illnesses. A lot of the illnesses we see of the people working at the hospital are probably exacerbated by stress. I know my own health has been worse lately and a lot of it is probably due to working in a job where we are pressured to try and get money in and no way to do it. We can’t force the insurance companies to pay and they are using every excuse in the world not to. The State and Federal Governments are making it harder to get payment from them. We are writing off hundreds of thousands of dollars in bad debts.
You add the additional stress of taking care of an elderly mother whose health is declining rapidly to the stress of a thankless job and worrying if the hospital is finally just going to pull the plug and close there are some days when I just feel like giving up. My Senators are one Republican, Richard Luger and Evan Bayh and it is probably an exercise in futility to write them but I am not going to give up on the idea of health care reform and I will make sure they know what we are facing in their state. Our small hospital is facing a crises we didn’t create because of the current health care industry. Any politician wanting my vote and support better be prepared to do something about getting everybody insured. Health care for everybody is not a liberal pie-in-the-sky dream. It is a necessity.
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