“If there’s no primary care provider available, are you going to spend an entire day trying to get strep throat adequately treated?” Bader said. Something as common as strep throat can cause long-term health issues when it goes untreated, she said. Valerie Bader, an associate professor at the University of Missouri specializing in community health, said lack of access to critical and primary care can make preventable illnesses worse. “(There’s) the fear of, ‘If I do have a heart attack or a stroke or something like that, I’m not going to get to the hospital fast enough.’” “It pulls people out of the local community who maybe would like to stay there and want to be around their family but, because of their medical needs, can’t,” Brown said. Now, the nearest hospital is 27 miles away, which is how far residents need to travel for a COVID-19 test if they need one. Michael Brown, the mayor of Concordia, said the I-70 Community Hospital closure has also impacted his town.Ĭoncordia is approximately 10 miles from Sweet Springs, and when the hospital was open, it would take ambulance crews around 10 minutes to take people to the hospital. Hospital closures disrupt the towns where the facilities were located, and the closures also have a ripple effect on nearby towns. Sheps Center of Health Services Research. Seven rural hospitals have closed in Missouri since 2014, according to the Cecil G. “If the sale actually went through, there’s been no press release to any of the papers (about) what’s going to happen.” “Nobody can find out anything,” Treece said. They say it’s hard to confirm that information. Many community members, including Treece and Dohrman, have heard it could become a medical mall, possibly providing primary, dentistry and other clinic services but no emergent care. “We don’t know what’s going to happen,” Bybee said. Sweet Springs residents have been left in limbo. After several attempts to reach Affinity Health over the phone for comment, officials were unresponsive. The head of the Sweet Springs ambulance board, Dennis Dohrman, said the ambulance district wanted to buy the hospital but was unable to find a partner to work with it in the day-to-day operations.īut when the building went up for sale in December, Affinity Health Partners - a Dallas-based company - put in a $3.4 million bid. Perez filed for bankruptcy for the I-70 Community Hospital on March 21, 2019. “He took the 401(k)s, and he took the premium for health insurance, took their wages. “I think all he ever did was take money he never gave any,” Lewis Bybee, a former member of the hospital’s community board, said. Over half of these have closed in the midst of allegations of an extensive lab-billing scheme. I-70 Community Hospital was owned by Empower HMS.Īt one point, Empower CEO Jorge Perez owned or managed 18 hospitals across eight states, one of which was Sweet Springs’ hospital.
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