Would the door slam shut on Dent County if Salem Memorial District Hospital (SMDH) ceased to exist?
Probably not, but that door would shut quite a bit, and the future of the community would not look near as bright as it would with a hospital sitting just outside town on Highway 72.
Quality health care, transportation, housing, education, the job market and things to see and do are all factors that contribute to not only our quality of life, but economic development. Health care probably tops the list, especially with an aging population.
That’s why, as a community, we need to do everything we can to bring SMDH back to economic health and see that this vital asset in the community gets back to thriving again. This is not only important to Dent County people who can get urgent care close to home – saving lives – but those to the east and south of us who depend on SMDH for primary care.
When it comes to health care, seconds and minutes matter. So when most of the population of Dent County can be at SMDH in 10 to 15 minutes instead of a 30-minute or more drive to another hospital, lives are at stake.
I am not saying we are in jeopardy of the hospital shutting down. There have been too many great improvements at SMDH and there is too much government help for rural hospitals for it to go away that easily. However the hospital is in dire financial straits right now. Administrator Kasey Lucas was fired Friday night, and Rural Hospital Group (RHG) is going to be in effect calling most of the shots for at least awhile.
Let’s hope and pray RHG’s results are as good as their resume, which shows they have resuscitated many a rural hospital down on its luck and low on cash.
How we got here is not as important as where we go. SMDH is that important; It’s that crucial to the financial future of Dent County and the safety of its residents.
More than a decade ago my retired friend Dennis Pryor – former administrator at SMDH – and I were talking about marketing for the hospital. He was telling me about the wonderful things going on there and I was sharing my thoughts on how to best market those things. What followed were years of SMDH telling its success story to Dent County through The Salem News and other media. Dennis asked me at the time to sum up what they needed to do.
“A lot of people look at Salem Memorial District Hospital as a rinky-dink little country hospital,” I told him. “We’ve got to show them that it’s not.”
And that we did. Within a year or two SMDH was trumpeting its staff, state-of-the-art equipment, patient surveys and many other things that showed it was well past the rinky-dink stage. People were listening. Patient numbers were up. In- and out-patient numbers were up. Revenue was up. Mr. Pryor was a happy man and SMDH patients knew they were lucky to have something so important in their backyard.
Fast forward to today. I don’t know what happened recently at SMDH. I don’t know why SMDH is down to 30 days cash on hand. I don’t know why the lab hasn’t been at 100% for months. I don’t know why Lucas was fired, or that key hospital employees are exiting. I don’t know why no one seemed to notice – or at least didn’t do enough about it – until the financial fire was raging.
All those questions and their answers matter and will likely become public in the future, but right now the most important thing is that we, as a community, fight with everything we’ve got to not only keep the SMDH doors open, but also bring back financial security and confidence.
In 1965, a group of Dent County citizens realized what a hospital could mean to the community. Five years later, SMDH opened its doors and helped usher in economic development.
Nobody wants to move to a town without a hospital nearby. And when they need health care on a regular basis, they move closer to it. Get the picture?
Since SMDH’s opening in 1970 a long-term care facility was added, surgeries are performed on campus, visiting doctors come in and save folks a long drive, a dialysis center was added, three physicians buildings were built, technology is impressive, most departments have expanded care, and one recent count showed SMDH employed 160 people.
There are 2,000 rural hospitals serving 72 million people, according to the American Hospital Association. They are so important that there are federal programs – lifelines if you will – that help them stay open and help them save lives.
So there you have it. SMDH and rural hospitals such as Texas County Memorial Hospital to the west and the larger Phelps Health to the north, are all part of the health-care system that is so vital in making our rural communities great places to live.
It’s frightening to think what rural life would be like without them. Simply put, an untold number of lives have been saved because of rural hospitals such as SMDH. And an untold number of lives would be lost without them.
