James Magee
Piggott Community Hospital started an outpatient mental health program last month and plans to offer an infusion outpatient service by the end of April or early May, as a way to improve the hospital’s finances.
Administrator James L. Magee said both services were needed in the northeast Arkansas community.
Offering the infusion program would “save people from having to travel to other larger hospitals” to receive their medications. “We would be doing various types of infusions on an outpatient basis.”
Magee said the 25-bed hospital, like most small rural hospitals, has been struggling financially. He said the city-owned hospital will have a loss for 2017, but said he didn’t have the audited figures yet.
In 2016, the hospital lost $620,000 on net patient revenue of $14.5 million, and in 2015, it lost $309,000 on net patient revenue of $14.2 million.
“Health care … is a hard business,” Magee said.
Medicare reimburses critical access hospitals 99 percent of the cost to treat the patient.
About 80 percent of Piggott’s patients in the hospital are on Medicare and about 60 percent of its outpatient patients are covered by the federal health care insurance program for people 65 and older, Magee said.
“I don’t think very many smaller hospitals are making any kind of margin on their patient care operations,” he said.
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