Hospital to discontinue services

June 17, 2012

By the end of July, physical therapy and home health (hospice) patients at Memorial Hospital of Texas County will need to find an alternative.

The hospital will no longer be offering those services as of July 28, and will stop taking new patients on June 25.

The cutbacks will affect 10 employees.

“We identified two departments that we are comfortable no longer offering services because the services are already being offered in the community,” said hospital interim CEO Lee Hughes. “Obviously everyone knows that we have been losing money as a hospital, so we’ve been tasked with identifying areas where we are losing money or areas where we can save money.”

Hughes said the hospital will save money by not duplicating services already offered by other businesses in town. He also said the hospital will not contract out for the physical therapy or home health services.

"Physical Therapists will go through the process of getting privileges from the medical staff and upon being granted will be able to provide care to inpatients at the hospital," Hughes added. "Once each person has privileges the patient/physician will decide together which PT to use.

"Jacob Tuttle, Rachel Jones and Eric Johnson will all have temporary privileges for 90 days while the medical staff portion takes place.

With these services being discontinued, Hughes said the hospital is looking into adding new services.

“There is an opportunity for the hospital to begin offering services that aren’t currently being offered like dialysis or sleep study, that we could begin pursuing," he said. "So this is not just a financial move, it’s financial-driven for the most part but there is some strategy involved.”

He said there could be dialysis services offered at the hospital by the end of this year, with sleep study possibly some time in 2013.