It might be as late as March before the Crittenden Regional Hospital in West Memphis will be reopened, according to Ameris Health CEO Robert Bauer.
“There’s a lot of questions still left to resolve,” Bauer told Arkansas Business last week.
Ameris, based in Nashville, Tennessee, agreed to reopen the 140-bed West Memphis hospital if voters approved a 1 percent sales tax to support the hospital. Voters approved the tax last month. The tax, which will sunset after five years, is expected to generate between $25 million and $30 million during that period.
Bauer’s to-do list includes a number of issues that need to be resolved before the hospital can reopen. Atop the list are potential problems stemming from Crittenden Hospital Association’s Chapter 7 bankruptcy filing, which is pending.
Bauer also said questions surrounding the proceeds from the sales tax have to be resolved. “The tax apparently can’t be used for a for-profit company,” such as Ameris, Bauer said. “So we’re having to come up with something that’s going to work, and I don’t know what that is yet.”
Other hurdles involve making sure health information systems are in place and hiring workers, which Bauer said could take five to six months.
He said that the early projections from Ameris show the hospital would need about 100 to 110 employees on its first day. But, he said, the employment number could increase if the hospital receives enough patients.
The hospital will be staffed according to how many patients it has, instead of how many beds it has, which is what some hospitals do, Bauer said.
“We’ve always managed our hospitals leaner and more appropriately than a lot of the bigger hospitals around the area,” he said.
Ameris primarily develops, manages and operates community and psychiatric hospitals.
The Vision
Crittenden Regional Hospital will be operated as a hospital and not a medical center, Bauer said. “When you think you’re a medical center you try to do more than you really probably should or is justified for that market,” he said.
The services that will be provided are “probably 70 percent of what most people would need in a lifetime,” he said.
The hospital will treat basic urgent care cases in its emergency room. The hospital also will provide inpatient and outpatient surgeries as well as lab work, but not high-end procedures such as cancer treatments or open-heart surgeries.
What may hurt the hospital, though, is the fact that it’s been closed since last September as a result of the bankruptcy. The Crittenden Hospital Association reported $33.3 million in debts and $27.75 million in assets when it filed for bankruptcy.
Bauer said some of the hospital’s former doctors and employees whom Ameris would have wanted back on the job might have moved out of the area or signed contracts with other health care providers.
But, he said, Crittenden County has kept up with the maintenance on the hospital and kept it secure.
Crittenden County Judge Woody Wheeless has told Arkansas Business since September that he was searching for a company to run the hospital.
Since the hospital closed, residents of the county of about 50,000 people are forced to go to Memphis, Jonesboro or Forrest City for their emergency medical care, he said.
“With the hospital being closed, it’s put a major burden on emergency services,” Wheeless told Arkansas Business last month. An ambulance delivering a patient to Memphis could be tied up for up to six hours.
Bauer said he’s working on getting the hospital open as soon as possible.
“There’s still a lot of moving parts, and there’s no guarantees in life,” he said.
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