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The post Marshall Ramsey: Survivor appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Just when Alexis Smith thought it couldn’t get any worse, she was diagnosed with cervical cancer.

The 30-year-old mom of four had been recently widowed and lost her job of five years after missing work to care for her dying husband.

Her grief, though, was soon replaced by the more imminent stress of a long and arduous Medicaid application process that left her wondering how she would pay for the hysterectomy and chemotherapy she needed. 

“Every time I was calling to check the status, no one could tell me anything,” she said. 

At first, agency officials told her over the phone it would take 90 days to approve her application. Then, that became 120 days, Smith said. Her worries grew.

“I was getting worried, stressed out, I already had depression and anxiety,” she said. “In my head I’m like, ‘I’m sick, I can barely get up to cook for my children, I need to have this surgery, I have no money, and they won’t even approve my Medicaid?’ Medicaid was really my only hope.”

Smith’s first application, filed on Aug. 7, was approved 93 days later on Nov. 8., the day before her surgery – only after Mississippi Today reached out to the Mississippi Health Advocacy Program and its consumer advocates got involved.

Smith’s story likely sounds familiar to the thousands of Mississippians who have experienced increased Medicaid application processing times in the second half of 2023.

Experts say the increased application times are due in large part to “unwinding,” a process in which state Medicaid divisions across the country have been reviewing their rolls for the first time in three years after the end of COVID-19 restrictions that prevented them from unenrolling beneficiaries.

It’s a massive undertaking for state Medicaid agencies, and in states such as Mississippi, the diversion of resources has made an already-lengthy application process even more prolonged.

Medicaid spokesperson Matt Westerfield confirmed that “unwinding is the main reason for the shift in eligibility application processing times.” 

Westerfield said that most of the applications taking more than 45 days end up being deemed ineligible. But in the last six months in Mississippi, ineligibility only accounted for 23% of those kicked off Medicaid. The other 77% of cases fell under the “procedural disenrollment” category – most of them a result of issues with paperwork. 

Mississippi has the 10th lowest rate of ex-parte renewals – automatic renewals that cut down on processing times during unwinding. 

Some of the people who are disenrolled for procedural errors end up reapplying, adding more stress to the system, explained Joan Alker, executive director of Georgetown University’s Center for Children and Families.

“On the slowdowns getting worse, we do think that is likely due to unwinding and the pressure on the system of families being inappropriately terminated and then reapplying — this is one example of why the state should slow down or pause procedural terminations, especially for children,” Alker said. 

Children have been disproportionately affected by unwinding. So far, most of the people who have lost coverage in Mississippi have likely been kids — 54,918 children have lost Medicaid coverage since unwinding began in June. A total of 98,766 people have been dropped in Mississippi thus far, but the agency won't say exactly how many of the people kicked off due to unwinding are children. 

There’s not a simple solution. In the short-term, it would obviously be helpful to hire more staff, but the agency is already struggling with its vacancy rate.

Mississippi Medicaid’s staff vacancy rate was 12% around the time unwinding began. That percentage has since inched up to 15%. Though that’s in line with other Medicaid agencies, Westerfield acknowledged that the department is working “aggressively to recruit and retain employees.”

The agency is adding 70 contractors this month to aid the workforce in eligibility determinations and redeterminations, he said. 

If Mississippi already had Medicaid expansion, unwinding likely would not be this bad, Alker said, since more people would fall under the income limit and would be automatically enrolled. The short-term effects of expansion could mean a much larger application volume, but in the long-term, expansion would provide for a more streamlined process. 

A majority of Mississippians support the policy, and most other states have expanded Medicaid. But Republican state leaders, such as Gov. Tate Reeves, have remained staunchly against it.

“What [Smith’s case] is demonstrating is that a simple income determination is a lot easier to make than a disability determination,” said Alker. “If you just have an income standard, as you would under Medicaid expansion, everyone under 138% of poverty is eligible. Period. You don’t have to prove other things.”

Right now, not only is the application process time-consuming — it’s confusing. 

When Smith first filed her regular Medicaid application on Aug. 7, nobody told her that cancer is considered a disability and she would need to apply for Aged, Blind and Disabled Medicaid. When she was told a week later and filed her new application, not only did the clock start all over again for her application’s processing time, but it was longer. 

States are required by law to approve or deny a regular Medicaid application within 45 days. For disability determination, that number is 90 days. 

“Medicaid is complicated,” Alker said. “It’s very confusing and there are a lot of changes happening ... The workforce is overloaded and they’re understaffed at most places. Unquestionably, unfortunately, there are mistakes made.” 

Though Westerfield said, in the short term, “finishing the unwinding is going to be the best thing we can do to decrease application processing times,” Medicaid’s latest unwinding numbers show the biggest backlog yet in December.

The vast majority of the reviews due in December — 42,531 of 57,616 — went uncompleted last month.

The agency’s growing backlog appeared to be shrinking some in recent months — until December. The latest numbers increased the agency’s total number of incomplete reviews by 72%, bringing the grand total to 81,358.

“Having pending renewals is not uncommon, and it’s neither good nor bad news,” Westerfield said. “We’ve been committed to a balanced approach aimed at protecting beneficiaries by ensuring accurate redeterminations and at protecting taxpayers by promptly removing ineligible individuals from the rolls.”

For the first time during unwinding, the majority of Mississippians dropped last month were disenrolled because they were found to be ineligible. Still, the majority of people kicked off the rolls so far during unwinding in Mississippi have been dropped for procedural reasons, instead of being found ineligible for Medicaid.

Short-term relief isn’t coming anytime soon — unwinding is set to continue for months. And while patients are waiting for Medicaid approval, they have to pay out of pocket for doctor’s visits and treatments. 

As a single, unemployed mother of four, Smith began a number of ventures – cooking and selling plates of lunch to workers, braiding hair, cleaning houses and party decorating – to cover basic needs. But she wonders if she had been able to pay for regular doctor’s visits if a pap smear could have detected the precancerous condition, which is nearly 100% treatable.

“I still wonder, since I was not going to those frequent doctor visits like I was supposed to, maybe they could have caught it before it turned cancerous,” Smith mused.

The post ‘My only hope’: Inside one Mississippi woman’s quest for Medicaid coverage appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Marcus Thompson, the newly appointed president of Jackson State University, has finalized six key administrative hires as his tenure reaches the two-month mark.

That includes Alla Jeanae Frank, a former assistant commissioner of operations at the Institutions of Higher Learning, who will now serve as a special assistant to the president. Another familiar face is Van Gillespie, a former assistant commissioner of legal affairs at IHL, who is now Thompson’s chief of staff.

Gillespie started Dec. 1. He graduated from the University of Mississippi School of Law and served as general counsel to the board of trustees during the same years that Thompson worked at the higher education agency as chief administrative officer. 

Both men came to IHL under the aegis of former commissioner Hank Bounds. Together, Thompson and Gillespie have significant insight into the inner workings of the often-opaque governing board that oversees Mississippi’s eight public universities, including Jackson State.

At IHL meetings, Gillespie could usually be seen sitting to the side of the trustees, and he was privy to the board’s executive sessions. 

In a press release, Thompson described the new members of his administrative team as “servant leaders.”

“Combined with the knowledge and passion of my existing cabinet members, this is the genesis of an incredible dream team to execute a strong pathway to success for JSU’s future,” he said.

Thompson also hired a new vice president for enrollment management whom IHL approved last week. (Gillespie’s hire as chief of staff did not need to be approved by IHL, according to a JSU spokesperson.) 

Kylon Alford-Windfield, a Jackson native, will make $150,000. He was previously the vice president for enrollment management at Stillman College, a private historically black college in Alabama, where he oversaw a “notable increase in enrollment,” according to JSU’s press release. He has also worked at two other historically Black schools, Mississippi Valley State University and Rust College. 

Like Thompson, Alford-Windfield is a recent graduate of Jackson State’s executive doctoral program in urban higher education, which was created to prepare diverse students to assume leadership roles at colleges and universities. Alford-Windfield is also a member of the same fraternity as Thompson, Kappa Alpha Psi. 

Thompson also made what appear to be two internal promotions. ConSandra McNeil, who recently served as an associate provost at Jackson State, is now the interim vice president of research and economic development. Mitchell Shears, the associate vice president for student success, will oversee the university’s federal funds and act as chief liasion for the leadership team.

At JSU, Shears “spearheaded the return of TRIO programs to JSU with 16 competitively funded programs – the most in the state and most on an HBCU campus,” according to JSU’s press release.

Onetta Starling Whitley, the first Black woman to serve as a deputy attorney general in the state of Mississippi, is Thompson’s new general counsel. After she retired from state service in 2020, Starling Whitley joined W T Consultants as a registered lobbyist.

Edward Watson was formerly general counsel at JSU. He is now deputy general counsel.

READ MORE: ‘IHL board picks internal choice to head JSU’

UPDATE 1/23/24: This story has been updated to include JSU Preident Marcus Thompson’s comment and Edward Watson’s current position.

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When the state’s economic development agency briefed lawmakers last week about the details of a multibillion-dollar economic development package, the public had few ways to listen in on how their tax dollars would be spent.

The Mississippi House of Representatives does not livestream or record its committee meetings, which can leave the public in the dark about a crucial step in Mississippi’s lawmaking process. Meanwhile, the Mississippi Senate does livestream both its committee meetings and full chamber proceedings.

House Speaker Jason White, a Republican from West, told Mississippi Today that he has no objection to livestreaming committee meetings, but he wants to consult with his leadership team before adopting a permanent policy on recording them.

“My commitment to you is I know our new Rules Committee chairman and our Rules Committee will look at that,” White said. “I don’t think anybody here is, like, staunchly against it.”

The bulk of the Capitol’s work happens in committee meetings because committee leaders have control over which bills are voted on and which bills die over the course of the legislative session. Committee meetings are also where lawmakers hear directly from agency leaders and conduct hearings.

House Rules Committee Chairman Fred Shanks, a Republican from Brandon, also said he does not oppose livestreaming the committee meetings, but he believes the House needs to think through logistical plans on how the recordings would work. 

“The Senate does it,” Shanks said. “I really don’t know the temperature of what all the other members think about it, but I would be open to hearing about it.” 

The House does livestream its proceedings in the House chamber, but not its 49 committees.

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Derrick Nix served Ole Miss exceptionally well for 16 years as an offensive assistant football coach, working first with running backs, then with wide receivers, all the while helping recruit some of the most productive players in Ole Miss history.

Last week’s announcement that Nix was leaving Oxford to join Hugh Freeze’s staff at Auburn came as a surprise to this column, mainly because I knew Auburn had made a huge run at Nix a year ago when Freeze first got the Auburn job. Then, Nix turned down his former boss to remain at Ole Miss.

But this time, the Auburn offer came with a new job title: offensive coordinator, which naturally comes with a higher salary and presumably one step closer to some day becoming a head coach.

“It was hard as hell to leave Ole Miss,” Nix told AuburnUndercover.com. “I spent all of my adult life in Mississippi. My 16 years at Ole Miss has been great for me, but an opportunity like this to move up and become an offensive coordinator in this great league and do it around those guys was like a layup, a dream come true.”

It is a dream come true in a career that almost never happened. The Derrick Nix story is one of family, faith, and remarkable perseverance in the face of near tragedy. It is a story worth retelling, especially since many younger readers weren’t around 21 years ago when Nix’s dreams of a professional football career were dashed and, at the age of 22, Nix did not know whether he was going to live or die.

Nix, a Baptist preacher’s son from Attalla, Alabama, was a highly recruited high school football player. Home state schools Alabama and Auburn recruited him hard. Florida wanted him, and Georgia, too. But they all wanted him to play linebacker, as had an older brother, Tyrone, at Southern Miss. Tyrone, by then, was coaching for Jeff Bower at Southern Miss. They recruited Derrick and told him he would play running back in Hattiesburg.

And, boy, did he. Nix, who weighed 220 pounds and possessed break-away speed, ran for 1,180 yards as a true freshman. He could run around you, but would just as soon run through you or over you. “The Baby Bull,” they called him. He possessed all the intangibles, too. Nobody out-worked him. He was first on the practice field, the last to leave it. Bower absolutely adored him, both as a player and a person. Derrick Nix ran for 1,054 more yards as a sophomore in 1999, leading the Golden Eagles to a 9-3 season, a Liberty Bowl victory and a No. 14 finish in the the final AP Poll.

Nix’s heath issues began the next year. Southern Miss began the 2000 season losing a 19-16 heartbreaker at Tennessee, but then trounced No. 15 Alabama 21-0 in Birmingham the following week and then throttled Oklahoma State 28-6 at Stillwater. The Golden Eagles won five of their first six games before Nix was diagnosed with kidney issues that would end his season. Without Nix, those Eagles finished 7-4.

Nix sat out the 2001 season but came back as a senior in 2002 for a season that those who witnessed will never forget. Despite recurring kidney issues that sapped his strength and limited his endurance, he ran for 1,154 yards. In a 23-20 victory over defending Big Ten Conference champion Illinois, he ran for 202 yards. Most memorably, he scored on one 50-yard run, then, exhausted, he went to his knees, puking in the end zone.

“Derrick had it all,” Dan Rooney, a college scout for the Pittsburgh Steelers, once told Sports Illustrated. “He reminded me a lot of Deuce McAllister. He had a gliding style, but he also had great running ability. He could break tackles with power, but he also had good enough feet that he could be elusive in open space. And once he broke loose, he could finish a run. He was a can’t-miss prospect, the kind any NFL team would love to have.”

Somehow – and despite shoulder, ankle and heel injuries – Nix made it through the entire regular season, rushing for 139 yards in a 24-7 victory over East Carolina in the season finale. The next week, extensive medical tests showed that he had lost 90% of his kidney function and would need daily dialysis until a matching kidney was found. His football career was over.

I remember talking to Preston Nix, Derrick’s dad. “My son is still alive and God has a purpose for him,” the father said. “We will do what it takes. He still has a long battle in front of him, but he will fight it.”

And I remember talking to Derrick himself. “The night before a game, I used to envision myself scoring touchdowns. Now I envision myself with a new kidney, out on the field coaching,” he said.

Said Bower, “He’ll be a great coach, like his brother.”

Now then, this is going to make a really long, really complicated story short. The search for a new kidney ended with his oldest brother, Marcus, who was a perfect match. On June 6, 2003, doctors transplanted one of Marcus’s kidneys into Derrick’s abdomen.

A month later, Derrick Nix talked about it, saying he felt like a brand new person and hadn’t realized just how lousy he felt before the transplant. “I get a lot of credit,” he said, “but my brother Marcus is the hero. He went into that hospital when nothing was wrong with him and let doctors cut on him and take that kidney for me.”

Derrick said he was still coming to grips with the end of his playing his career, but added, “I am going to become the best coach I can be.”

And now here he is, just over two decades later, an accomplished coach, a husband and a father, respected by all who know him, including those he leaves behind at Ole Miss. He never made the millions he would have made in the NFL, but he will make right at a million a year at Auburn. When Derrick Nix got his brother’s kidney and new lease on life 21 years ago, he ran with it. Indeed, he is still running.

The post 21 years ago, Derrick Nix received a new kidney. Boy, has he run with it appeared first on Mississippi Today.

The post Marshall Ramsey: Meltdown appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Jan. 22, 1906

Pioneer aviator and civil rights activist Willa Beatrice Brown was born in Glasgow, Kentucky. 

While working in Chicago, she learned how to fly and became the first Black female to earn a commercial pilot’s license. A journalist said that when she entered the newsroom, “she made such a stunning appearance that all the typewriters suddenly went silent. … She had a confident bearing and there was an undercurrent of determination in her husky voice as she announced, not asked, that she wanted to see me.” 

In 1939, she married her former flight instructor, Cornelius Coffey, and they co-founded the Cornelius Coffey School of Aeronautics, the first Black-owned private flight training academy in the U.S. 

She succeeded in convincing the U.S. Army Air Corps to let them train Black pilots. Hundreds of men and women trained under them, including nearly 200 future Tuskegee Airmen. 

In 1942, she became the first Black officer in the U.S. Civil Air Patrol. After World War II ended, she became the first Black woman to run for Congress. Although she lost, she remained politically active and worked in Chicago, teaching business and aeronautics. 

After she retired, she served on an advisory board to the Federal Aviation Administration. She died in 1992. A historical marker in her hometown now recognizes her as the first Black woman to earn a pilot’s license in the U.S., and Women in Aviation International named her one of the 100 most influential women in aviation and space.

The post On this day in 1906 appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Mississippi Today’s Adam Ganucheau, Bobby Harrison, and Taylor Vance break down last week’s special session in which lawmakers appropriated at least $350 million to close a deal that will bring a new green energy plant to north Mississippi.

The post Podcast: The ironies of Mississippi’s new green energy plant appeared first on Mississippi Today.

BELZONI – Deep in a crumbling building, there is a room filled with folders. 

Just a sliver of the room’s walls peek over the top of the manila piles. There are too many folders to count, with thick stacks of documents inside them, containing precious, forgotten information about a forgotten community, a community once cared for in this very building.

The only hospital in Belzoni, Patients’ Choice Medical Center of Humphreys County, closed in 2013. Besides the piles of paper, this building is empty, and the town is following suit. In the decade since the hospital’s closure, Belzoni has suffered.

Belzoni calls itself the “heart of the Delta” because of the town’s central location — people driving to various places in the region must pass through Belzoni, particularly those coming from Jackson.

After driving over the last hill just north of Yazoo City, U.S. 49 opens up into the Delta’s vast fields of green, leading straight to the city of Belzoni, just a speck flying past on the right. If you blink, you’ll miss it.

But to miss it would be to miss one of the rural communities that comprise the beating heart of Mississippi.

Rural towns, where the majority of Mississippians make their lives and homes, are often powered by hospitals that provide health care and jobs that sustain small but significant economies. When these small-town hospitals like Belzoni’s close, it can be devastating to so many people. 

It’s not just a loss of health care — economies collapse, as does a sense of safety. Almost everyone in Belzoni seems to have had a near-death experience, or a family member who has a near-death experience, after the hospital closed. The nearest hospitals are at least a 25-minute drive away.

And not all citizens suffer equally. 

In the Delta, the power dynamic and wealth gap between Black and white residents borne out of a history of slavery and Jim Crow laws are still prevalent. Poverty, race and health are inextricably connected. 

Belzoni’s story may be the future of other small towns in Mississippi. Nearly half of the state’s rural hospitals — just like the one that shuttered here — are at risk of closure.

Most Mississippians support Medicaid expansion. Ample national and state research shows that the policy is financially beneficial, and medical experts have said for years that it would help Mississippi’s hospitals and residents. But Gov. Tate Reeves continues to vehemently oppose the policy. 

Meanwhile, hospital closures loom across the state, due in large part to huge uncompensated costs from caring for uninsured Mississippians. The Delta, the sickest region of the state, is in particular danger. 

At least 12 hospitals, including long-term care facilities, besides Patients’ Choice have closed since 2008, according to the Mississippi State Department of Health.

But the impact of Medicaid expansion goes beyond financial viability for hospitals — it means making health care accessible for more people. As of 2019, 8.9% of people in Humphreys County were uninsured and would qualify for coverage if Medicaid was expanded, the highest rate of any county in the Delta and tied for the fourth-highest rate in the state. That’s slightly less than half of the total population of uninsured adults in Humphreys County. Statewide, an additional estimated 200,000 to 300,000 people would qualify under Medicaid expansion.

The lack of a hospital didn’t stop Emily Donovan from moving to Belzoni from Vicksburg in 2015. Her love of the lush Mississippi Delta and small-town life outweighed her concerns. After all, growing up in rural Mississippi, she was used to driving at least half an hour to get to the closest hospital.

But now, almost a decade and two kids later, Donovan is worried about her family and the vitality of her community.

She and her husband, who own an internet and phone cable business, have been turned down by prospective hires because of the lack of emergency care in Belzoni. And Donovan is the executive director of the county’s economic development board. It’s hard to do her job — boosting the town’s economy — when there’s no hospital for 25 miles in any direction. 

Though Donovan estimates about a dozen businesses have opened in Belzoni since she moved there, an even greater number have closed.

“When you don’t have a hospital, businesses don’t usually want to come into a community,” she said.

As Donovan’s kids grow up, the issue also hits closer to home. 

At a sleepover Donovan’s son hosted at her house a few months ago, he and his friends climbed up on the roof in a fit of boyish play during the night. When Donovan’s husband realized where the teenagers were, he hollered up to them, “We don’t have a hospital anywhere near here, so y’all need to get down!”

“What are you going to do in the middle of the night?” Donovan asked one afternoon in November, lines of motherly worry creasing her forehead. 

A number of people in Belzoni could tell her the answer: Drive like hell and hope you make it.

A bell jingles as Mayor Joe Jackson opens the door and shuffles into a restaurant a few steps away from City Hall.

“Hey, mayor,” the owner behind the counter says, while others murmur their greetings to him.

Many of the patrons have known Jackson for a long time, long before he was elected mayor in 2020. He was born and raised in this community, like many of them. Belzoni is that way — a town where there are no strangers. 

It’s a rainy day. Jackson orders gumbo, looks out of the window and starts a story.

“Our small town hospital didn’t offer a whole lot,” he begins. “But it was something.” 

Jackson was born in Belzoni by a midwife in 1960, the same year his hometown reached a population peak of 4,071 residents. 

Though the town’s population had been dropping for decades, three strikes hit the town in the latter half of the century. First, the factory operated by retail company Jockey and employing at least 300 people closed in 1993. 

Then, Belzoni’s largest industry was devastated. Once called the world’s catfish capital, the town couldn’t keep up with the rise of imported fish. Belzoni is hesitant to let go of its moniker — painted catfish sculptures still leap from its sleepy downtown sidewalks — but the days of leading in catfish exports are well behind them.

The final nail in the coffin was the hospital closure in 2013. 

“When the hospital closed, it was kind of a surprise to most people,” Jackson said. “It was almost like they were open one week, and then closed the next week.”

At first, residents, including Jackson, were hopeful the hospital would reopen. He had worked at the hospital for 20 years as an EMT, from 1985 to 2005. It seemed unfathomable to him that the hospital would close for good.

At the time of its closure, rumors were flying about hospital mismanagement — it seemed like most people hoped that new leadership could reopen the facility and turn the hospital around, Jackson said. 

But months went by. 

Suddenly, there just seemed to be fewer people in town. Some of the hospital’s 100-plus employees left Belzoni, and those who didn’t had to find jobs elsewhere.

“There were people in town every day because they worked at the hospital,” he said. “Now, they’re working out of town, so even the restaurants and stuff around town failed … downtown got a lot quieter.”

Despite repeated requests for data about city revenue, the city clerk never provided any information. State data shows, though, that Belzoni has collected less and less in sales tax since the hospital closed. In 2013, the city’s share of sales tax was $536,960. Ten years later, despite inflation, it’s down to $461,588.

Jackson has seen the hospital issue from all sides: as a longtime citizen, as a former hospital employee and now, a town leader. No matter how you look at it, he said, Belzoni is a shell of its former self.

“You can’t really convince people to move to a small town that does not have a hospital,” he said. “It just breaks your heart.”

In 2020, the same year Jackson was elected mayor, Belzoni’s population dropped below 2,000 for the first time in a century.

Five men sit at a table in a stuffy room on the top floor of the Humphreys County courthouse.

At the center is Humphreys County Board of Supervisors president Richard Stevens, known to most as just “Dick” or “Dickie.” Stevens, the sole white person on the board, is flanked by the other four supervisors. 

All eyes are turned toward them and the woman Stevens is currently in a screaming match with, Timaka James-Jones, the county’s circuit clerk.

One hour into the board of supervisors meeting on Nov. 6, a discussion about county affairs has devolved, but no one seems particularly surprised. 

This sort of thing isn’t uncommon in a county where the gaps between members of the community are so wide and deep.

People who live in Belzoni don’t agree on why the hospital closed and whether it’s had an impact on the town’s economy. Even its leaders can’t reach a consensus on the hospital. And for some of the town’s residents, these meetings are the easiest way to be heard by the five men who make decisions for them all. 

Stevens is perhaps the most powerful man in Humphreys County. 

He was the board’s longest serving member until his retirement in December, and the owner of the county’s largest employer, Consolidated Catfish Co., located just a few miles north of Belzoni in a pinprick of a town called Isola. 

Stevens and Roy Broomfield, who also retired at the end of last year, were the only two board members serving in December who were also on the board when it voted to sell the hospital to a private owner, Ray Shoemaker, a few years before its closure. 

However, the two long-serving board members have differing ideas about how important a hospital is to Humphreys.

Stevens has lived in Humphreys County since 1949. He was 6 when his family moved from Tremont, a small town in north Mississippi near the Alabama state line. His father was a crop duster, so instead of flying back and forth every summer, the Stevens patriarch made the move permanent. 

Stevens started farming catfish in the late 60s, and his plant, a result of two merged catfish processors, has been around for decades. The company processes more than a million pounds of catfish every week, and it employs around 600 people, who are some of the only people in Humphreys County with health insurance, Stevens said.

He decided to run for the board seat 24 years ago because he wanted to protect the county’s economic vitality. 

However, two decades later, one of the town’s biggest economic drivers is closed, according to the mayor and other city leaders. 

Stevens doesn’t see it that way. He said the hospital had been losing money for a long time, and it wasn’t even doing its job that well. 

“It wasn’t comparable to nearby hospitals,” he said. 

Stevens complained that residents were misusing the emergency room, treating it like “free” primary care. 

Though there are two health clinics in Belzoni that offer primary care, emergency rooms are the only health care option for many uninsured people because they cannot turn away patients, regardless of insurance status. There are few, if any, primary care or preventative care options for people without health insurance — the hospital was likely their only option.

By the time the board of supervisors sold the hospital, it was millions of dollars in the hole, Stevens said. He hoped Shoemaker would be able to turn things around but doesn’t consider it much of a loss that he ended up being unable to. 

“I think he did what he could do to make it work,” Stevens said, placing much of the blame on Belzoni’s already-slowing economy, which he doesn’t think the hospital’s closure significantly affected. “There were many negative factors.”

Stevens is, at best, resigned and, at worst, indifferent: “It’s just the way of life here.”

Dr. Sidney Gorton II feels similarly. He and his father are the only two full-time doctors in Belzoni. They run a family rural health clinic in Belzoni, and both used to work at the hospital. 

He agreed with Stevens that misuse of the emergency room was one of the things that led to the hospital’s decline. The hospital’s inpatient census was always pretty low, too, he remembers, and when patients did have Medicaid coverage, low reimbursements rates didn’t cover hospital expenses.

But the doctor said he was not sure that Medicaid expansion was the solution to Belzoni’s health care desert, and that issues leading to the hospital’s closure were more far-reaching. 

Broomfield’s recollection is a little different — and much more painful.

While Broomfield, who’s been on the board for two decades, agrees that perhaps Belzoni didn’t have the population or dollars in the community to sustain the hospital, he believes the lack of emergency care in Belzoni is dangerous. He knows it’s dangerous. 

Because even Broomfield, another powerful and well-known Belzonian, isn’t immune to the effects — he lost a son to lack of health care in the Delta a little over a decade ago. 

It was supposed to be a happy occasion.

Back in 2010, Broomfield’s son, 39-year-old Roy Jr., was home visiting his parents. He lived states away in Dallas, and Broomfield was thrilled to have his son in town.

But at about 2:30 a.m., Broomfield’s son woke him up, complaining about feeling sick. His father guessed it was indigestion or something similar, but thought they should go to a hospital anyway, just to be safe. 

Broomfield figured they had a little time, so he didn’t take his son to Patients Choice, which had a reputation as a declining hospital at that point, referred to as the local “Band-Aid station.” So Broomfield decided to take him to Greenwood Leflore Hospital, a little over 30 minutes away. 

On the way, his son suffered a massive heart attack. An ambulance Broomfield called never arrived, and the son was brain dead before they reached the Greenwood hospital.

Broomfield has regrets — he always will. But at least he had the option to take his son somewhere closer. 

“At least we had a place to go to get a Band-Aid put on,” Broomfield said. “Now we don’t even have that. A lot of people’s lives could have been saved if we had a hospital here.”

The circuit clerk, James-Jones, shares Broomfield’s perspective, as do many Black leaders in town. James-Jones grew up with Broomfield’s son, and she was born at what was then-Humphreys County Memorial Hospital.

Not only was the hospital a huge employer, James-Jones said there were also impactful community advocacy programs being run by the hospital. In her eyes, the hospital was central to the community.

That’s why James-Jones, who was recently elected to the state House of Representatives, isn’t afraid to speak her mind to the board and fight in public with its leader. She has suffered immense loss — friends and family — from the lack of emergency care, which she directly attributes to the board’s actions. One of the most well-known examples is the death of one of her relatives, Harmony Ball-Stribling. 

Everyone in town seems to know Harmony’s story, every grisly and heart-wrenching detail.

During the summer of 2021, Harmony was days away from giving birth when she began experiencing pregnancy complications as a result of preeclampsia, a condition that results in high blood pressure and organ damage.

Her husband, Byron Stribling, raced her to the hospital in Yazoo County. Harmony was his high school sweetheart, the love of his life. She was pregnant with his first child, a baby they had tirelessly prayed for and underwent an arduous in vitro fertilization process to conceive.

But before they arrived at the hospital, Harmony went into cardiac arrest in the passenger seat. Byron, who operates a funeral home, buried his own wife and baby days later. 

After her death, Harmony’s mother, Shenelle Ball-Burks, and Byron implored the board of supervisors to figure out how to reopen the Belzoni hospital. Harmony’s mother remembers how defeated she felt when the supervisors told her there was nothing they could do.

James-Jones says the hospital closure is “the most devastating thing that has happened” in Humphreys County.

Amid the competing opinions and recollections of the demise of Belzoni’s only hospital, one of the few people who should be able to explain the hospital’s closure isn’t keen on providing many details. 

Much of what happened with the hospital is lost to time, thanks to a specific kind of small-town Kafkaesque bureaucracy.

No one can say where the hospital’s financial reports are. The county’s board attorney, state Rep. Willie Bailey, didn’t know where they would be and said the county wouldn’t be in possession of them, if they even still existed. He suggested the hospital board might still have them.

But the hospital board is, obviously, disbanded. Several of its previous members have died in the past 10 years. 

Even Mack Liddell, the Humphreys County chancery clerk since 2020, couldn’t say where the records were. 

“Those records are not in my care at this time,” he responded to Mississippi Today’s records request. 

Liddell said his predecessor had taken a great number of county records “home with him” when he left office, and then promptly died, too. Perhaps the records are somewhere in that man’s house, or they’re in one of the many manila folders in the run down hospital building that sits on the edge of town.

One would think that Ray Shoemaker, the hospital’s last owner, would have all the answers, but it doesn’t seem like he particularly wants to talk about the hospital’s decline.

After all, Shoemaker was sentenced to 55 months in federal prison in 2012 for multiple counts of health-care fraud, most of the malfeasance related to another hospital he ran.

“I don’t want my story played again,” he said when reached by phone. 

Though hesitant to talk, he explained that he became interested in owning the hospital because he grew up in Walnut Grove, another small town in east central Mississippi, and recognized the need for rigorous health care in the state’s rural communities. 

When the board of supervisors heard Shoemaker was interested —  he was being lauded then for turning around Tri-Lakes Medical Center in Batesville — they jumped at the opportunity. Shoemaker took over the Belzoni hospital’s management in 2007, and a year later, he bought the 34-bed hospital outright, taking on its $5.4 million in debts.

When asked what made him think he could turn the hospital around, Shoemaker joked, “Insanity.”

He went on to take charge of several other hospitals across the state. Shoemaker says he reduced the Belzoni hospital’s debt and increased its services by sharing resources among his facilities.

Then in 2012, Shoemaker was prosecuted for health care fraud committed at the Batesville health center. 

Despite purported strides at the Belzoni hospital, when Shoemaker started experiencing “legal challenges,” as he puts it, the facility was suddenly in danger. He could no longer manage the hospital’s daily operations. 

Inspection reports show that the hospital faced difficulties in its final years, even before Shoemaker took over.

Apparently, record-keeping has long been a struggle for the facility. Since 2007, state evaluators have been taking issue with the unorganized mountains of records stored in the hospital. In December 2012, “the administrator stated that he could not find documentation that the facility had conducted an annual evaluation of its total program during the past year,” according to one inspection report.

The reports show that by July 22, 2013, Patients’ Choice was no longer in operation.

As it turns out, Shoemaker can’t speak to the hospital’s final days. He was in prison.

Joann and Joseph Wilson walk through the dark halls of the dilapidated hospital building.

The ceilings are falling in, and there’s graffiti on the walls. There are rooms upon rooms of documents. But they think the building still has some life in it. 

The old hospital was recently bought by an investor who has partnered with the Wilsons to turn the building into a clinic for people struggling with mental health issues and substance abuse. 

For Joseph, the project holds special meaning — his life was saved at the Belzoni hospital when it was in operation. He was rushed here in 2008 because he slipped into a diabetic coma, and doctors in the emergency room stabilized him.

“If this facility had not been here when I was sick, I might not be alive today,” he said. 

The Wilsons say they’re open to allowing someone to open an emergency room in the clinic building. They agree it’s a major need for the community.

Several people who mourn the loss of the hospital have cited efforts in recent years to reopen an emergency room in Belzoni.

As mayor, Jackson has met with countless politicians and health care leaders to bring back emergency care in Belzoni. It’s hard to see any kind of future for the town without it, he said. James-Jones and Liddell, the chancery clerk, have been invested in this effort, too. 

The efforts went as far as a packed town hall, where prolific hospital owner Quentin Whitwell spoke about new legislation that might have made it possible to reestablish emergency care in Belzoni.

Senate Bill 2735, passed during the 2022 legislative session, was created in an effort to operate freestanding emergency rooms in rural Mississippi. But ultimately, according to Whitwell, “The law wasn’t sufficient to get that accomplished.” No county has gotten an emergency room from this legislation, according to the state Health Department.

The bill’s principal author, Sen. Benjamin Suber of Bruce, said the legislation was an attempt at getting health care to parts of the state that needed it most, but admitted that he wasn’t sure if “it was gonna work or not.”

Suber did not know that Whitwell considered the bill flawed. 

“No one’s ever told me that, but we can do what we can to amend it,” he said. “If we needed to fix something, I would fix it. But that’s the first time someone’s ever said that to me.”

It was news to many residents that this law would not result in an emergency room in Belzoni. They had been waiting for years. 

Liddell was one of them surprised by the update.  

“This is hurtful,” he said. “Until the governor and every ally associated with him believes that the Delta is worthy of health care or other vital services … It doesn’t matter what color you are. You are a human being, and one day you’re going to get sick.”

Belzoni’s sons and daughters who moved elsewhere know that. The ones who stay, such as Byron, know that. The businesses that choose to establish themselves elsewhere know that. Broomfield, the county supervisor who lost his son, knows it, too. 

But after years of feeling like the state doesn’t care about his home, Broomfield doesn’t know what to do.

“The Legislature, they don’t do anything for the Delta,” he said. “They just don’t care nothing about us.”

There’s something different about downtown Belzoni on an afternoon in early December: Specifically, noise.

A hum emanates from the center of town, where a towering Christmas tree, framed by a citrine Delta sunset, overlooks 5 p.m. traffic. For Belzoni, that means just a few more cars on the street than usual.

Emily Donovan, the economic foundation director, is bustling about, setting up tables and greeting guests at Belzoni’s Second Annual Christmas Tree Lighting and Farmers Market. 

State Rep. Timaka James-Jones is here, too, talking to longtime neighbors and friends. Vendors are selling local wares, such as Southern chow chow relish and a variety of pickled vegetables. Kids are chasing each other, breaths like little clouds in the cool evening air. 

This is the Belzoni that Donovan knows and loves. This is the Belzoni that Donovan wants to see survive. 

Five-year-old Treasure Dulaney is one of the many children staring up at the Christmas tree in awe.

Her mom, Tiffany Ceasar, a lifelong Belzoni resident, didn’t think twice about raising her family in Belzoni. It’s home.

But before Treasure can go play with the other kids, Tiffany crouches down and zips up her daughter’s jacket. 

She’s always been prone to colds, and with no hospital in town, Tiffany doesn’t want to take any chances.

This story is part of “The Holdouts,” a reporting collaborative focused on the 10 states that have yet to expand Medicaid, which the Affordable Care Act authorized in 2010. The collaborative is a project of Public Health Watch.

The post A small town struggles to survive in the heart of Mississippi’s hospital crisis appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Due to icy roads and freezing temperatures, Mississippi universities across the state are moving classes online, with one school asking students to delay moving onto campus until the weather improves next week. 

As of Thursday, the state’s only public universities that were open for regular business were Mississippi State University in Starkville and the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg.

Delta State University and Mississippi Valley State University moved to virtual work and classes where possible, according to those universities. So did Jackson State University, which is also experiencing “water woes” due to boil-water notices and low water pressure primarily in west and south Jackson stemming from the winter weather. 

The University of Mississippi announced yesterday it was postponing the start of the spring semester to Jan. 25 and asking students not to return to Oxford, where the roads are impassable, until Jan. 23. Oxford is located in the northern part of the state that has been hit hardest by the winter storms. 

In a campuswide message, Chancellor Glenn Boyce wrote that the university’s facilities crews need above-freezing temperatures in order to clear the slick ice covering the campus roads, parking lots and sidewalks. The mayor of Oxford, Robyn Tannehill, has asked residents to stay off the roads. 

This will affect about 5,400 students, both in and out-of-state, who live on campus and have yet to return, Jacob Batte, a spokesperson, wrote in an email to Mississippi Today. He estimated about 300 students are already on campus. 

At least one dorm, Stewart Hall, has sustained leaks and water damage from the storm, Batte added. The Thad Cochran Research Center also saw some damage, but Batte wrote that the university had learned how to effectively prepare for winter weather from past freezes. 

The university’s food pantry, Grove Pantry, has been open for limited hours this week, and university police have distributed supplies to eight international students who moved in this week, Batte wrote. Hourly employees who were scheduled to work this week are eligible for administrative leave. 

Delta State opened its food pantry for emergency hours earlier this week and delayed move-in by one day, according to the university. 

“Our facilities staff have worked extra hard to ensure our halls have had heat and water,” Eddie Lovin, the vice president for student affairs, said in a statement. “Our food services staff have ensured that meals were available for students on campus, as well as any essential staff helping keep the halls open. Our Counseling Staff has made themselves available to our students through virtual counseling, to assist any student who may need assistance during this time.” 

Alcorn State canceled its mobile pantry for Jan. 18. Mississippi University for Women kept its offices closed this week and extended drop/add until Jan. 23.

The post Winter weather causes virtual start to college spring semester appeared first on Mississippi Today.