Impending Hospital Closure Rattles Atlanta Health Care Landscape and Political Races

ATLANTA — Like many neighborhoods in cities throughout the nation, Atlanta’s Previous Fourth Ward is altering.

Condominium buildings and trendy minimalist houses punctuate metropolis blocks of low-income housing. Many longtime residents of the historic neighborhood the place Martin Luther King Jr. was born have been priced out and pushed to different elements of city.

Atlanta Medical Heart, a 460-bed Degree 1 trauma middle, would be the subsequent fixture to vary.

Regardless of banners proclaiming the hospital’s dedication to the realm — “120 Years Caring For Atlanta,” one reads — its nonprofit proprietor, Wellstar Well being System, just lately introduced plans to shut the hospital’s doorways on Nov. 1.

Georgia has seen a number of rural hospitals shutter previously decade, however this 12 months Atlanta has joined different city facilities with facility closures, together with a earlier downsizing at a facility within the close by metropolis of East Level.

The Wellstar announcement has stoked the political debate over Medicaid growth forward of the Nov. 8 midterm elections. Like 11 different states, Georgia has not expanded eligibility guidelines for its Medicaid program beneath the Inexpensive Care Act, and hospital officers throughout the state say inaction has harm their backside strains as a result of they nonetheless deal with excessive numbers of uninsured sufferers, a lot of whom can not pay for therapy.

The Wellstar announcement shocked metropolis officers, together with the mayor, Andre Dickens, in addition to different members of the neighborhood.

On a latest weekday morning, Teresa Smith, 60, who lives within the neighborhood, stated she steadily receives care there for a continual digestive situation. “This hospital shall be missed by the entire neighborhood,” she stated.

Liliana Bakhtiari, the Atlanta Metropolis Council member whose district consists of the hospital, was sharp in her evaluation. “There shall be lack of life and significant accidents that won’t be taken care of, and I want that mattered extra to Wellstar,” she stated.

Wellstar declined KHN’s request for an interview in regards to the closure.

Nancy Kane, an adjunct professor at Harvard’s T.H. Chan Faculty of Public Well being, sees connections between the Atlanta scenario and hospital closures in different main cities.

Many have been acquired by giant well being care corporations as a part of bundle offers, and served largely low-income, minority populations.

“Should you purchase a hospital, you must have an obligation to repair it up,” stated Kane. “Wellstar has the funds to take a position on this hospital. It’s a alternative.”

Some neighborhood members ponder whether the hospital closure will result in an expensive actual property improvement on the roughly 20 acres Wellstar owns within the neighborhood.

Randy Pimsler, an architect whose agency has designed tasks within the space, stated “it might change into a clean slate, both for redevelopment or for brand new improvement.”

Politicians have been fast to show the closing right into a marketing campaign situation. And on the middle of the talk is Gov. Brian Kemp’s well being care coverage.

The Kemp group is working to place collectively a long-term plan for strengthening well being care within the space after the closure, stated Andrew Isenhour, a Kemp spokesperson. Kemp, a Republican who’s operating for a second time period in November, is unlikely to attempt to preserve the power open.

However officers on the nonprofit Grady Well being System stated this week that they’ve met with Kemp’s workplace, Dickens, and officers from Fulton and DeKalb counties a couple of monetary infusion of state funding that may assist capital wants at Grady Memorial Hospital, a Degree 1 trauma middle a couple of mile from Atlanta Medical Heart.

Grady is anticipating as many as 2,500 further emergency room visits a month after Atlanta Medical Heart shuts its doorways.

“We are able to take in all of the trauma,” stated John Haupert, CEO of Grady Well being System. Nonetheless, the added ER crunch shall be a problem with extra sufferers arriving, stated Ryan Loke, chief well being coverage officer for Grady.

State funding would speed up Grady’s current plans to transform workplaces into inpatient care areas, which might add greater than 180 grownup beds as quickly as a 12 months from now. The hospital is also including 40 to 45 beds over the following six weeks, and is planning to put in a 24-bed discipline hospital to assist deal with the affected person move from the closed hospital.

The closing places Medicaid growth “entrance and middle” within the political dialog, Haupert stated. Kemp has proposed a restricted plan that may provide entry to the state-federal insurance coverage program to individuals who can fulfill a piece requirement or comparable obligation.

His challenger, Democrat Stacey Abrams, has lengthy made increasing Medicaid a prime marketing campaign situation.

“That is not a shock,” Abrams stated. “It’s anticipated to occur as a result of the Kemp administration refuses to take motion.”

U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.), pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church, which is lower than a mile from the hospital, has additionally decried the closure and cited the pressure on well being care services attributable to Georgia’s refusal to increase Medicaid. Wellstar officers have stated that Medicaid growth alone wouldn’t have saved the Atlanta facility open.

Earlier this 12 months, Wellstar stopped offering emergency room and inpatient providers at its hospital in East Level, simply southwest of Atlanta. On the time, it stated these sufferers could possibly be seen at Atlanta Medical Heart, about 8 miles away. Haupert estimated it could value a whole lot of hundreds of thousands of {dollars} to modernize the soon-to-close Atlanta hospital, which is what made a rescue troublesome.

The closures only a few months aside might assist Abrams’ arguments for Medicaid growth resonate with voters, stated Andra Gillespie, an affiliate professor of political science at Emory College. “A difficulty that was in all probability tailor-made extra in the direction of rural Georgia now abruptly turns into an Atlanta-area situation,” she stated.

Gillespie cautioned that different points, corresponding to inflation, crime, and abortion, are more likely to be extra motivating to Georgia voters.

Wellstar, primarily based in suburban Marietta, acquired AMC and the East Level hospital from Tenet Healthcare throughout an acquisition push in 2016, a part of a $575 million deal that included three different hospitals within the metro area.

Todd Greene, previously a member of Wellstar’s neighborhood board for AMC, stated the system put extra assets into its suburban services.

“Wellstar’s suburban hospital-oriented administration strategy sadly has resulted in giant parts of Atlanta’s black and brown communities not gaining access to proximate and significant well being care providers,” he stated in a written assertion.

In Wellstar’s announcement of the closure, it stated it had invested greater than $350 million in capital enhancements on the facility since 2016 and sustained “$107 million in losses in simply the final 12 months, amid lowering income and growing prices for workers and provides resulting from hovering inflation.”

The choice to shut the hospital didn’t come as a shock to some employees members, stated Dr. Sulieman Wazeerud-Din, an emergency medication doctor on the hospital, who stated docs “have been conscious of monetary losses.”

However the abrupt announcement brought on a profound sense of grief amongst docs, nurses, and different nonmedical workers, he stated.

Within the days for the reason that closure announcement, Grady has supplied jobs to a spread of Atlanta Medical Heart workers, from physicians and nurses to housekeeping and safety staffers.

David Patton has lived in Atlanta’s Previous Fourth Ward for 30 years and stated Atlanta Medical Heart has been a giant a part of his life.

His grandfather died in a nursing residence on the campus, he has gotten care on the ER, and his son took swimming classes on the hospital’s athletic membership, all whereas he has seen the neighborhood remodel from a “forgotten” a part of the town to 1 that’s change into a lightning rod for brand new improvement.

“It boggles my thoughts that an establishment like that may simply shut down just about in a single day,” he stated.