Paris, Tenn.–Following a presentation by the NW Tennessee Cares organization asking the Henry County Medical Center to appoint a task force with an eye to restoring the hospital’s obstetrics department, hospital officials said their ongoing exploration into the possible management of the hospital by an outside healthcare system would include a stipulation that an obstetrics department be restored.
Ken and Marsha Banasiewicz of Paris, representing NW Tennessee Cares, read a letter at Thursday night’s meeting of the Board of Trustees. “To date, the HCMC Board of Directors has called for no alternative plan, nor requested research that would help our community begin to reverse our embarrassing and deadly status as a maternity desert,” they said.
“We are not ignoring the financial reasons for the closure and acknowledge they are real. However, we believe that OB is critical to our community and is the ultimate mission of a rural community hospital geographically removed from alternative options for care. Despite the financial constraints, we feel efforts need to be made to find the revenues necessary to support this service,” the ltter read.
“Via this letter, NWTN Cares respectfully requests that the hospital consider convening a task force with community input to formulate potential scenarios which would address the basic needs of pregnant women in the community up to and including the re-establishment of the OB service. To that end, we also would like to offer Tom Gee, former HCMC CEO and a member of NWTN Cares as a potential member of this proposed group.”
The letter continued, “Repercussions are being felt deeply and daily. Below are the chief reasons we are requesting your help:
- Pregnant women and their partners will lose valuable time travelling to/from appointments causing loss of time at their workplaces and with their families.
- Area employers stand to lose work hours/productivity from their pregnant employees/partners due to longer drives to OB appointments in other towns.
- Having an OB center in the region is a selling point. Economic development will suffer If the NWTN region is virtually without OB care.– Rob Goad, Executive Director PHC Industrial Committee
- HCMC and the community stand to lose viability as families begin to seek OB care in towns offering those services. How long will it be before other services, including imaging and specialty clinics disappear?
- The 340B Drug Plan will likely not be available due to a decrease of inpatient Medicaid days. This negatively impacts drug access for the entire community.
The following three observations should be noted:
- Two of our OB physicians are still working in/near the community.
- Much of the needed equipment is still on site.
- At least two dozen of our OB nurses are either working in the area or working at HCMC in other capacities.”
The concept of management of the hospital by an outside healthcare system was formally introduced a strategic planning committee meeting by the Hospital CEO John Tucker. Another work session involving the hospital board and the county commission may be planned for the future.
Photo: Marsha and Ken Banasiewicz presented the letter at last night’s board meeting.