Cash-Poor Governments Ditching Public Hospitals

By SUZANNE SATALINE
AUGUST 29, 2010

Peninsula Clarion

A patient and care giver at Central Peninsula Hospital in Soldotna, Alaska, where the government is considering a partnership with the for-profit LHP Hospital Group of Texas.

Faced with mounting debt and looming costs from the new federal health-care law, many local governments are leaving the hospital business, shedding public facilities that can be the caregiver of last resort.

A patient and care giver at Central Peninsula Hospital in Soldotna, Alaska, where the government is considering a partnership with the for-profit LHP Hospital Group of Texas.

Officials in Lauderdale County, Ala., this spring opted to transfer their 91-year-old Eliza Coffee Memorial Hospital and other properties to a for-profit company after struggling to satisfy an angry bond insurer.

"We were next to knocking on bankruptcy's door,'' said Rhea Fulmer, a Lauderdale County commissioner who approved the deal with RegionalCare Hospital Partners, of Brentwood, Tenn, but with trepidation. She said the county had no guarantee the company would improve care in the decades to come. "Time will tell.''

Clinton County, Ohio, in May sold its hospital to the same company. Officials in Kenai Peninsula Borough, Alaska, are weighing a joint venture with a for-profit company, similar to one the same company made with Bannock County, Idaho. And Prince George's County, Md., is seeking a buyer for its medical complex.

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