Southern Miss currently holds the nation’s longest winning streak at 10 games and has moved into position to possibly host an NCAA Regional. Scott Berry’s USM program has been a model of consistency since he took over for the legendary Corky Palmer.
Stream all episodes here.
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On the heels of several major hospitals departing the Mississippi Hospital Association, the organization’s leader is baffled.
The hospitals’ move comes shortly after the association’s political action committee made a $250,000 contribution to Democratic gubernatorial candidate Brandon Presley, an outspoken proponent of Medicaid expansion.
The state’s largest public hospital system, the University of Mississippi Medical Center, announced in a letter on April 28 that it was leaving the MHA. Days later, three more hospitals — Singing River on the coast, Gulfport’s Memorial Hospital and George County Regional in Lucedale — followed suit.
Forrest General Hospital in Hattiesburg on Monday became the most recent hospital to leave the organization, as first reported by Magnolia Tribune.
The PAC made the donation – the largest it has ever made – in late April, MHA Executive Director Tim Moore said.
Forrest General’s termination letter said the departure was fueled by “recent events,” while the other four hospitals cited concerns with MHA leadership.
Moore said donating to Presley’s campaign was recommended by the MHA’s board of governors, who are administrators of member hospitals elected by MHA members.
“We all have had these discussions for a number of years now that we support candidates that support hospitals, and here is a candidate that is coming very strongly forward with a complete health care agenda,” Moore said. “It was certainly not just … it was not my decision.”
Presley, a Democrat, is running against incumbent Republican Gov. Tate Reeves in the 2023 statewide elections. While Reeves has been an active opponent of Medicaid expansion, Presley has vowed to expand Medicaid if he’s elected governor.
Moore, who’s led the MHA for nearly 10 years, suspects the donation was a catalyst. The hospitals’ departures have left him in disbelief, he said.
“There’s nothing else that has changed. Nothing,” he said in an interview with Mississippi Today last week. “Our strategy has not changed.”
Mississippi hospitals as a whole are struggling amid the pandemic, when labor and operating costs skyrocketed. The struggle is most apparent in the state’s rural hospitals — about a third are at risk of closure.
Experts say Medicaid expansion would bring in millions to Mississippi and insure an additional 200,000 to 300,000 Mississippians. State leaders such as Gov. Tate Reeves, the incumbent candidate, have remained opposed to the policy change, though most Mississippians and lawmakers support it.
“How can anybody blame the hospital association for committing upfront to somebody that has committed to helping hospitals and patients across the state? How can you condemn that?” Moore said. “I can’t figure it out.”
Multiple requests for comment to George County Regional Hospital went unanswered. Spokespeople for UMMC, Singing River, Forrest and Memorial said that hospital administration had no further comment on their decisions to leave the MHA.
A connection to Reeves is clear for at least one hospital.
Memorial’s CEO Kent Nicaud has consistently been one of Reeves’ top donors, leading to an appointment to the state gaming commission earlier this year. Reeves also appointed Nicaud’s wife, Jenny, as an administrative law judge for the Mississippi Workers Compensation Commission in 2021.
While expansion isn’t a silver bullet, experts agree that it would go a long way to increasing the financial viability of Mississippi’s struggling hospitals. Moore previously said that the state’s hospitals run up about $600 million annually in uncompensated care costs.
Moore said that it’s difficult to imagine any hospital CEO in Mississippi as an opponent of Medicaid expansion because of the vast financial benefits.
“It is a good policy, a fair one,” Moore said. “It’s good for the state of Mississippi. It’s good for the patients. It’s good for the providers. It’s an economic stimulus. It just goes on and on. And there’s just no logical reason not to be trying to move forward.
“While I’m sitting in this seat, I’m nonpartisan. I’m looking for folks that will support our hospitals and providers to take care of patients.”
Michael Beyer, Presley’s communications director, said Presley was proud to have earned the support of the MHA and if elected, would work to “end Tate Reeves’ hospital crisis.”
“Tate Reeves needs to answer why there is always enough taxpayer money for pet projects for his celebrity friends and personal trainer but never enough to solve his hospital crisis, which has left many rural hospitals across the state scrambling to keep their lights on and 220,000 working Mississippians without healthcare,” Beyer said in a statement.
Shelby Wilcher, Reeves’ press secretary, said the Governor’s office “does not have any comment on MHA’s internal affairs.”
The MHA, a member of the American Hospital Association, represents the interests of Mississippi’s hospitals and advocates for health care policy change, including Medicaid expansion. They also offer services to member hospitals, like a health information exchange program and educational courses. According to its website, the MHA comprises over 100 hospitals, health care systems and other providers, as well as over 50,000 employees.
While the PAC operates as a separate organization from the MHA, it answers to the same board. And Moore serves on the board, as well as director of both organizations.
Moore said during the nearly 100 years that the MHA has represented the state’s hospitals, hospitals have rotated in and out of the organization, but those departures have not been publicized.
“Hopefully at some point we can reconcile whatever differences these are with members that have become dissatisfied or whatever has been the confusion, because I will say I’ve been extremely disappointed as to how these were handled,” Moore said.
Whether or not hospitals are members of the MHA, they reap the benefits of the changes the organization advocates for, he said, but it’s harder to convince state lawmakers to make policy changes when the hospitals are fractured.
“In a state like Mississippi, with small geography and a relatively small population … if you break them up into segments, you have a much more difficult job in trying to unify the industry and come in one voice,” he said. “If you implement another association … they tend to undermine each other.”
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An Alabama grand jury indicted former state trooper James Bonard Fowler for the Feb. 18, 1965, killing of Jimmie Lee Jackson, who was trying to protect his mother from being beaten at Mack’s Café.
At Jackson’s funeral, Martin Luther King Jr. called him “a martyred hero of a holy crusade for freedom and human dignity.” As a society, he said, “we must be concerned not merely about who murdered him, but about the system, the way of life, the philosophy which produced the murderer.”
Authorities reopened the case after journalist John Fleming of the Anniston Star published an interview with Fowler in which he admitted, despite his claim of self-defense, that he had shot Jackson multiple times. And Fleming uncovered Fowler’s killing of another Black man, Nathan Johnson. In 2010, Fowler pleaded guilty to second-degree manslaughter and was sentenced to six months behind bars.
The post On this day in 2007 appeared first on Mississippi Today.
State Rep. Earle Banks, a Democrat representing Jackson in the House since 1993, faces a federal criminal charge for allegedly evading payment of federal income taxes.
According to court documents unsealed this month, Banks reported $38,237 in income on his 2018 federal tax returns even though he “knew that he had received more than $500,000 in additional income in August 2018 from profits from the sale of real estate.”
Banks, the 68-year-old who was elected to the Legislature in 1992, is accused of “willfully making a false material statement on a federal income tax return.”
Jackson attorney Rob McDuff, who is representing Banks, said in a statement: “Mr. Banks made a mistake on his tax return in 2018 and failed to include a capital gain. We have cooperated with the IRS and the U.S. Attorney’s Office as they have looked into this matter, and we will continue that cooperation in moving toward a final resolution.”
The maximum penalty is three years in prison, a $250,000 fine and one year supervised release, according to court documents.
Banks, an attorney and funeral home director, is an active member of the Mississippi Democratic Party. In 2020, he ran unsuccessfully for chairman of the state party after serving four years as second-in-command of the party’s executive committee.
In 2012, Banks ran unsuccessfully against incumbent Bill Waller Jr. for a seat on the state Supreme Court.
Banks is unopposed for reelection later this year to his Jackson House seat. It does not appear a conviction would keep Banks from serving in the Legislature. The Mississippi Constitution bars anyone convicted of most state or federal felonies from serving in the House or Senate, but Section 44 of the state constitution exempts federal tax crimes from being a disqualifying offense.
“This section shall not disqualify a person from holding office if he has been pardoned for the offense or if the offense of which the person was convicted was manslaughter, any violation of the United States Internal Revenue Code or any violation of the tax laws of this state unless such offense also involved misuse or abuse of his office or money coming into his hands by virtue of his office,” the Mississippi Constitution says.
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Mississippi Today wins the Pulitzer Prize.
Six words I have always believed would be spoken. Six words that a betting woman might have laughed off when we were getting started as the state’s first nonprofit, online-only newsroom. Six words made all the sweeter after seven years of indescribably hard work.
When people ask me about my path into nonprofit news, I share this story about my own days as a budding journalist.
I have always been a good writer, but I was a terrible reporter. I never had the guts to ask hard questions. I never had the confidence to walk into a room with powerful people to press them for truth and ask for answers. This is why I love my work. I champion the brave, dedicated journalists who put in long hours to walk into uncomfortable spaces armored with facts and data.
I have a front row seat to the grinding, complicated and nuanced research and reporting that takes place before an interview is scheduled. I am the proverbial fly on the wall to endless spreadsheets, dense public records and inches-thick case files. I have watched reporters like Anna Wolfe spend years, literally, becoming subject matter experts on the issues they cover. Always with curiosity, always with ethics, always at heart those impacted most by the story at hand.
This week’s Pulitzer Prize win speaks volumes to Anna’s dedication to shining light on why outcomes remain so poor for Mississippi’s impoverished when there are dedicated funds to give them a hand up. It also speaks to the power of nonprofit news, which by design, allows reporters to stay with a story, to dig in and continue coverage for as long as needed. Moreover, it puts an exclamation point on the value of local news, the impact it carries and the absolute necessity of a free, independent press.
This work is critical, and it comes with a price tag. Our newsroom has invested thousands of dollars on record requests, attorney fees and travel across the state to report this story.
To the thousands of readers who have supported our mission, thank you. To those of you who haven’t yet joined us in this powerful public service journalism, I invite you to become a part of our community by making a donation today.
Our journalists may be the ones with the grit and determination to see a story through, but without your support, those stories go untold.
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Following a few hiccups, the federal government finalized Alliance Healthcare System’s rural emergency hospital status, according to the hospital’s leaders.
This makes Alliance the first in the state to receive such a designation.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) granted the hospital the special designation, aimed at increasing struggling small, rural hospitals’ financial viability, in March. Soon after, though, CMS asked hospital leadership for more information and placed the hospital’s status under review.
The issue was that the hospital was too close to Memphis, Tenn., which is about 50 miles away from Holly Springs where the hospital is based. According to the hospital’s chief operating officer and legal counsel Quentin Whitwell, CMS wanted further confirmation that the hospital was indeed rural, which is required to qualify for the designation.
After a letter from Dr. Dan Edney, Mississippi’s state health officer, confirming the hospital’s status as such, the rural emergency hospital designation was accepted, Whitwell said.
CMS did not respond to a request for comment by press time.
The rural emergency hospital designation was just rolled out by the federal government a few months ago. To qualify, hospitals must end inpatient services and transfer emergency room patients who need further care to larger hospitals within 24 hours. In exchange, they receive monthly stipends from the federal government and higher reimbursement rates.
Alliance has been losing money for years, its CEO Dr. Kenneth Williams previously said.
He said the hospital’s survival was contingent on its approval as a rural emergency hospital.
Now that their status is finalized, Alliance joins four other hospitals as the first rural emergency hospitals in the country.
As for whether it’ll ease the hospital’s financial challenges, Whitwell is hopeful.
“We expect the new designation to improve both the financial and the outpatient capabilities for citizens of Marshall County,” he said.
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It’s the new silent killer in Mississippi.
Since 2020, the state has seen at least 27 overdose deaths from the animal tranquilizer xylazine, either alone or combined with fentanyl, said Col. Steven Maxwell, director of the Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics.
“It’s a crisis,” he said. “We’re not experiencing the crisis as much as places like Philadelphia, Atlanta, San Francisco and Los Angeles, but we are experiencing a crisis with regard to the lacing of fentanyl with other drugs, such as xylazine.”
The number of drug overdose deaths in Mississippi have nearly tripled since 2018, reaching 754 in 2021, according to the most recent state Department of Health statistics. The overdose deaths of Black Mississippians have catapulted from 37 to 165.
Nationwide, drug overdose deaths have doubled between 2015 and 2022, according to provisional data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Synthetic drugs, such as fentanyl, now make up more than two-thirds of those fatalities.
At HMP Global’s recent RX Summit in Atlanta, Dr. Rahul Gupta, director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, announced that his office had designated the fentanyl-xylazine mix as an emerging drug threat.
“If you thought fentanyl was dangerous and deadly before, it has become even more lethal and destructive now,” he said. “We all must act.”
Xylazine is a non-opioid animal tranquilizer, typically administered by veterinarians to horses, cattle, deer, elk and moose.
Illicit use of the sedative has been skyrocketing in recent years. In 2015, the drug was involved in 2% of overdose deaths in Pennsylvania; now it’s involved in more than a fourth of those deaths.
The biggest growth has come in the South, which saw the highest increase in seizures of xylazine (193%) between 2020 and 2021, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration.
“Xylazine is not safe for human consumption,” Gupta said, “and it has potentially deadly consequences when used.”
Advocacy groups such as Drug Abuse Resistance Education have called xylazine “worse than fentanyl,” which is already involved in more deaths of Americans under 50 than any cause of death, including heart disease, cancer, homicide, suicide and other accidents, according to the DEA.
Because xylazine is designated for use in animals that may weigh significantly more than the average American, the effects on the human body are far greater, said William Lynch, a New Jersey clinical pharmacist who spoke at the RX Summit.
Xylazine not only slows breathing and the heart rate, but can cause the blood pressure to plummet, especially when used in combination with fentanyl, he said. In addition, users injecting the drug can develop severe skin ulcers that can resemble horrific burns, leading to skin grafts, possible amputation or even death.
When someone overdoses on fentanyl, emergency responders can use naloxone to try and revive that person. But when someone overdoses on a combination of fentanyl and xylazine, the naloxone has no effect on the xylazine, Lynch said. But it should still be given to reverse the effects of fentanyl, he said.
If naloxone does revive someone, “they have to go to the hospital,” because they could suffer from what he called “flashback pulmonary edema. They could possibly stop breathing and essentially drown in their sleep from fluid that accumulates in the lungs.”
On the streets, xylazine alone is known as “tranq,” or “tranq dope” when it’s mixed with fentanyl, he said. Experts say both dealers and drug users may mix the pair to prolong the opioid high.
Fentanyl has virtually replaced heroin on the streets because of its price tag, he said. While heroin costs about $23,000 a pound, according to a 2020 study, fentanyl is 10 times cheaper. Xylazine can run less than $10 a pound, according to a DEA report.
With regard to the suspected heroin seized in New Jersey, he said, 98% tested positive for fentanyl; only 2% had heroin alone. In New Jersey in 2022, of the 98% drug seizures that tested positive for fentanyl, 36% of those samples tested positive for xylazine.
In nearby Philadelphia, xylazine is supplanting fentanyl. In seizures there, Lynch said, there are 24 parts of xylazine to every one part of fentanyl, and the purity of the xylazine has gone up while the purity of the fentanyl has gone down.
Xylazine has long been easy to obtain, he said, and anyone could have had it delivered to their homes, not just veterinarians. To combat this, the FDA recently started tracking xylazine shipments.
Because it can be purchased cheaply in a powder or liquid form, dealers can mix this sedative with other drugs, which makes fatal overdoses a real possibility, he said.
Unlike fentanyl, xylazine isn’t illegal, which means there are no laws that give police the power to arrest.
Making xylazine a controlled substance would enable authorities to arrest those possessing or trafficking xylazine, Maxwell said. “It would be treated like any illicit drug.”
To attack this problem, governors in Ohio and Pennsylvania have declared xylazine a controlled substance. There is also a push in Congress to make it a controlled substance federally and also in some state legislatures, although not so far in Mississippi.
Asked if Gov. Tate Reeves supports the state making xylazine a controlled substance, Press Secretary Shelby Wilcher replied that there is currently legislation pending in Congress that would make the drug a Schedule 3 substance under federal schedules.
“The Office of the Governor works closely with the Mississippi Department of Health and Mississippi Department of Public Safety on an annual basis to update the state’s drug schedules,” she said. “Xylazine will certainly be part of the discussion.”
Lynch said one advantage to taking this step is veterinarians and their practices would be required to track the drug, just as they do with opioids and other controlled substances they use. “If you ever waste any of it,” he said, “you have to document the destruction with a witness.”
One concern about making xylazine a controlled substance is how it might affect veterinarians, who have used the sedative for half a century, said Bill Epperson, professor and head of the Department of Pathobiology and Population Medicine at Mississippi State University’s College of Veterinary Medicine.
The drug is typically used for pain relief and to “calm fractious animals,” he said. “There is not a good substitute for xylazine in large animal general practice.”
Given that veterinarians have used xylazine responsibly for decades, the drug should still be used “to support the legitimate practice of veterinary medicine,” he said. “We are strongly in favor of harsh penalties for those suppliers engaged in illicit activity.”
In March, Congress introduced the Combating Illicit Xylazine Act, which would make illicit use of xylazine fall under Schedule III penalties and allow legitimate veterinary use to continue. The American Veterinary Medical Association supports the bill.
Lynch warned that xylazine “is just the drug de jure,” and others are certain to follow. For example, he said, the synthetic opioid isotonitazene (known as “ISO”) “is approximately three times more potent than fentanyl and has already been seen in New Jersey and other parts of the country.”
This ever-changing chemistry puts authorities “in the position of playing whack-a-mole,” with new synthetic drugs certain to follow, Maxwell said. “We’ve got to find a way to loop in any lethal cocktail or any drug that’s enhanced beyond its potency.”
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