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Several Jackson restaurateurs won’t be using the low-interest loan program Gov. Tate Reeves said would “go a long way” to assist businesses as the city’s troubled water system hangs overhead. 

And they can’t imagine many of their peers will, either. 

It’s not that the businesses don’t need a lifeline. It’s that they don’t want to pile on more financial commitments while the water system and the city’s future feels unstable. Most operators already took out similar low-interest loans the Small Business Administration deployed in response to the pandemic.

Most businesses haven’t even started paying back those COVID-19 loans and many loaded up credit cards so they could afford bottled water and extra supplies to stay open during the water system’s seven-week failure. 

“This has been more like a slow bleed than a car crash,” said Jennifer Emerson, who owns Fondren’s Walker’s Drive-in with her husband. “And no one wants to incur more debt.” 

The SBA says about 60 businesses have started the application process so far. Lesley Hill, a public affairs specialist with SBA, said applying for and being offered a loan doesn’t mean a business has to accept it if the owner decides it isn’t the right fit later on. Businesses who don’t take an offered loan also have six months to go back and accept if needed. 

Despite the end of the boil-water notice a week ago and politicians encouraging citizens to spend money downtown, restaurateurs told Mississippi Today sales have improved a little but are still lagging – down by anywhere from 25% to 40%.

Fondren business owners say they’re on edge knowing the coming month’s cold weather will likely bring more problems. Last winter, several businesses in the downtown district were left without water for more than two weeks when frozen pipes burst.

“I’d rather see a plan in place,” Emerson said. “It’s hard to get people who live in Jackson back, and it’s impossible to get people from the suburbs back, if they don’t have the confidence that the water is safe and clean.” 

Reeves announced the water was safe last week, after tests at the plant came back clear for two days in a row. But local business owners said people are still skeptical and that has bled into their bottom lines in an industry already known for low profit margins. 

“We recognize people already have SBA loans, COVID loans, and that the last two-and-a-half years have been trying on everyone,” Hill said. “Businesses have been affected to the point they’re no longer able to survive.” 

Hill said businesses uninterested in loans should still come to their Business Recovery Center inside the Metro Jackson Chamber of Commerce building to be connected to free financial services with a partner group – some of whom have grant programs. 

Dana Koenig, the manager of the Aladdin Mediterranean Grill, said the nearly seven-week boil-water notice was a nightmare to navigate. It was a scramble to get to Sam’s Club to get enough water just to wash vegetables. There were days the business shifted just to take out because they barely had water pressure.

“A grant I could understand,” Koenig said. “But a loan? How about not making us pay sewage bills for the days we didn’t have water.” 

Visit Jackson, the city’s tourism bureau, has launched a small grant program but the payouts for businesses with 50-seats or fewer are $500 and for those with more than 200 seats up to $2,000. That’s the price range most businesses told Mississippi Today they were spending on water and ice just to get through a single week.

The Small Business Administration’s Economic Injury Disaster Loan program offers Jackson businesses loans with interest rates as low as 3.04% and payback period of up to 30 years. 

The loans are often used by businesses who have been leveled by hurricanes or other natural disasters. Jeff Good, who operates Sal & Mookie’s and two other Jackson restaurants, called the loan program generous but not the right fit for what most of the city’s businesses need.

“For most of us restaurateurs in Jackson, a loan, which we must pay back, is yet another negative financial burden which we simply cannot justify,” Good said. “We simply want our operating environment to stabilize. We want water. We want safety. We want quality of life.”

Ezra Brown, the owner of Fondren’s new bubble tea shop Soulé, also won’t be applying for the loan program. He said he’s working on digging himself out of debt, not adding more. 

“All we want to do is pay our taxes and deliver smiles,” he said of himself and area business owners.

He has other Soulé locations in South Carolina. He took out SBA loans to get through the throes of the pandemic and then hit the water crisis as soon as he opened in Jackson.

He would like to see state and city leadership create better contingency plans. Most business owners agree: Until the system is overhauled, it’s not a matter of if there’s another outage or boil-water notice but when. 

“If or when this happens again: What do we do? Who do I call on? Is a truck coming to deliver emergency water?” Brown said. “A five-gallon would be great. Just something that makes sense.”

Brown is working on refitting his equipment with his own filter and abilities to go off the water grid. But he wishes he’d be able to rely on the city – and a well-explained plan to fix the water system to ease everyone’s mind and security.

“We have been rallying around each other,” Brown said. “I think the community has gained more momentum helping each other out of a bad situation.” 

He has noticed more people coming back downtown. They’re leery still, he said. But with running clean water, he’s finally seeing more smiles. 

At least that’s something. 

The post Jackson businesses: ‘Slow bleed’ of the water crisis on finances needs more aid than loans  appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Brandon High School’s athletics booster club is raffling nearly 30 guns throughout the month of October as a part of its current fundraising campaign. 

The Thirty for Thirty raffle is an annual event which gives away one prize each day in the month of October. This year, 28 of the 31 prizes are guns; raffle tickets cost $20. A raffle winner picks up their prize directly from Van’s Sporting Goods, a local outdoor store, and must meet “all qualifying criteria” according to the information posted on the Brandon Bulldog Athletics Facebook page. 

Brandon High School Principal Bryan Marshall said that Van’s has been sponsoring the fundraiser for years and said this type of fundraiser is relatively common across Mississippi.

“There’s lots of gun giveaways in Mississippi that I know of,” Marshall said. “Most people do it the same way, nobody actually handles a weapon because you can’t just give a weapon away without it being registered, you’ve got to go through the process.”

Marshall also said that the school has no control over what the prizes are, and it is just a beneficiary of the money raised. 

Rickey Neaves, executive director of the Mississippi High School Activities Association, said raffling guns specifically is not something that every school does, but sporting goods are something that draws a lot of interest when booster clubs are hosting raffles or auctions. 

He added that guns may be a popular item to raffle because of the prevalence of hunting in some areas, but did caution schools regarding the optics. 

Nationally, a federal report released earlier this year showed that school shootings in the 2020-21 school year hit an all-time high since the government began tracking the data. A Gallup poll from earlier this month also showed 44% of parents fear for their children’s safety when they are at school, the highest number since 2001. 

“I would say that in today’s society, it’s probably not the best look a school district could give by raffling off guns,” Neaves said. “You always have to be cognizant of how the public is going to take that.” 

Van’s Sporting Goods and the booster club both could not be reached for comment. 

The post Brandon High School booster club raffles guns appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Former welfare agency director John Davis is set to plead guilty on Thursday to two federal charges and 18 state counts of fraud or conspiracy related to his role in the Mississippi welfare scandal, according to separate federal and state court filings.

The new federal charges pertain to welfare funds Davis allegedly helped funnel to the companies of retired professional wrestler Ted “Teddy” DiBiase Jr., son of famed WWE wrestler Ted “The Million Dollar Man” DiBiase. Davis and Teddy DiBiase Jr. had developed a close relationship during Davis’ term as welfare director from 2016 to 2019, as Mississippi Today has reported in its investigative series “The Backchannel.”

Davis instructed two nonprofits receiving tens of millions in welfare funds from his department to pay Teddy DiBiase Jr. under what the federal court filing called “sham contracts” to deliver personal development courses to state employees and a program for inner-city youth, “regardless of whether any work had been performed and knowing that no work would ever be performed.”

Davis, who had not previously faced federal charges for his role in the welfare scandal, is the latest defendant to plead guilty and agree to aid prosecutors. In April, Nancy and Zach New pleaded guilty to state charges in the welfare case as well as to separate federal fraud charges they faced related to public school funding. The News are cooperating with federal investigators, who continue to probe the welfare scheme and who else may have been involved.

The federal bill of information unsealed Wednesday, to which Davis is set to plead guilty, also describes four unnamed co-conspirators in the scheme. Based on the incorporation dates provided in the filing for the co-conspirators’ affiliated organizations or companies, Mississippi Today identified three of the alleged co-conspirators as Nancy New, director of Mississippi Community Education Center; Christi Webb, director of Family Resource Center of North Mississippi; and Teddy DiBiase Jr., owner of Priceless Ventures, LLC and Familiae Orientem, LLC.

A fourth unnamed co-conspirator, a resident of Hinds County, is unidentifiable in the filing.

Davis and the three alleged co-conspirators are each facing civil charges in an ongoing lawsuit Mississippi Department of Human Services is bringing in an attempt to recoup welfare money from people who received it improperly.

“As a result of the actions of DAVIS, the Co-Conspirators, and others, millions of dollars in federal safety-net funds were diverted from needy families and low-income individuals in Mississippi,” the federal filing reads.

The bill of information signals that Davis chose to waive a formal indictment and plead guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and one count of theft, which come with maximum prison sentences of five and 10 years, respectively. The court filing does not indicate what kind of deal he received for pleading guilty.

The federal charges specifically outline four payments or contracts Family Resource Center made to Teddy DiBiase’s companies in June and August of 2018 totaling nearly $2.2 million.

Casey Lott, the attorney for Webb, who is facing civil charges but has not been charged criminally, said his client stopped making payments to Teddy DiBiase Jr. when it became clear his companies were not conducting the services.

“The DiBiase’s and their organizations contracted to provide services to needy families,” Lott said in a written statement Wednesday evening. “The problem is they didn’t hold up to their end of the bargain. And once they refused to do everything Christi asked them to do, she refused to award any additional subgrants to those organizations. This enraged John Davis. He yelled and cursed Christi and other FRC employees for not sending them money anyway. He threatened to cut their funding if Christi didn’t do what he told her to do. And when she stood her ground and did the right thing, he followed through with his threat. Christi is the only one who ever told John Davis ‘no,’ and she was punished for it. She was forced to lay hundreds of people off. Those innocent people who were providing much needed services to the North Mississippi community lost their job because Christi stood up to John Davis and did the right thing. So, to say she’s a ‘co-conspirator’ is absurd.”

Attorneys for New, Davis and Teddy DiBiase either declined to comment or could not be reached Wednesday.

Officers from the auditor’s office initially arrested Davis in February of 2020 on state charges of conspiracy, embezzlement and fraud after a roughly nine month investigation. Hinds County prosecutors accused Davis of using federal money administered by the agency he oversaw to send Ted DiBiase Sr.’s other son, Brett DiBiase, to a luxury rehab facility in Malibu. The criminal charges pertained to just a small portion of a scandal that forensic auditors eventually determined totaled misspending of at least $77 million in funds from a federal program called Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.

Brett DiBiase pleaded guilty to his role in the scandal — raking in $48,000 from the agency for work he didn’t complete while he was in treatment — in December of 2020.

In April, Davis was indicted again on 20 state charges, including nine counts of bribery, which came with a possible sentence of 150 years.

An order of dismissal filed Wednesday in the state case signals Davis plans to plead guilty to five counts of conspiracy and thirteen counts of fraud in state court Thursday after pleading guilty to federal charges. The filing indicates that Davis will spend his entire sentence in the case in federal court and avoid notoriously harsh conditions of Mississippi’s state prisons, an arrangement similar to the plea deal New received in April. New, her son Zach New, Brett DiBiase, and Mississippi Community Education Center accountant Ann McGrew have pleaded guilty but have not been sentenced.

The post Former welfare director John Davis set to plead guilty to state and federal charges appeared first on Mississippi Today.

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

State Economist Corey Miller told legislative leaders that nationally there is a 35% chance of “a modest recession” during the upcoming calendar year.

 Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann said he believes odds of a recession are much higher.

“I believe we will have a recession…,” Hosemann told reporters during a break in the hearing attended by him, House Speaker Philip Gunn and other key lawmakers who make up the Legislative Budget Committee.

Hosemann pointed out that Miller and other economists projected inflation of about 2.5% for the year and thus far it has been more than 8%.

“I think we need to be preparing for all the issues we face that come from a recession,” Hosemann added.

Overall, Miller said the state economy has slowed considerably during the current fiscal year but that both the state and national economies remain “resilient.”

“In summary, the U.S. and Mississippi economies have slowed and the risk of recession is elevated, but not the base case. Inflation remains historically high but may have peaked,” Miller said. “The Federal Reserve will continue to raise interest rates to reduce demand, which should bring down inflation.”

Miller pointed out that nationally the number of people working had surpassed the pre-pandemic levels of February 2020. Mississippi remains 10,900 jobs below the number employed in February 2020.

Members of the Legislative Budget Committee normally receive a report from the state economist as they begin work on a budget recommendation that generally serves as a guideline for the full Legislature when it convenes in January to begin work on crafting a budget for the new fiscal year that begins on July 1.

Legislators said they budgeted conservatively in the 2022 session despite unprecedented revenue collections and should do so again in 2023.

Hosemann said lawmakers held back about $350 million in federal pandemic money last session and it could be spent in the coming year to help stave off an economic downturn in Mississippi.

“If people are out working on public projects we fund with that, it will lessen the chance of a significant impact here,” the lieutenant governor said.

Getting more people working in Mississippi remains an issue, Miller said. The state’s labor force participation rate, which accounts for all eligible to enter the workforce, remains one of the lowest in the nation, Miller said, at 55.2%. The pre-pandemic level was 56.2%.

The national labor force participation rate is 62.4% – a percentage point lower than the pre-pandemic rate.

Several factors could impact the lower numbers, including people retiring early and long-term symptoms of COVID-19.

The bottom line, Miller said, is that multiple factors are driving the high inflation, including higher wages driven by a lack of workers, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and supply shortages affected in part by China’s refusal to fully ramp up because of COVID-19 fears. Even the issue of fewer immigrant workers is contributing to the lack of workers.

While there might be disagreement on the extent of a economic downturn in Mississippi, it is a certainty that inflation has impacted all Mississippians. During the 2023 session, legislators will have to consider whether a salary increase for state workers is needed to deal with inflationary factor.

Kelly Hardwick, executive director of the State Personnel Board, told Budget Committee members he wanted more time to consider the size of any pay increase to recommend to the Legislature. But he said he expects it would be about 1.5% a year over several years, or a one-time increase of about 5%.

Both Wendy Bailey, executive director of Mental Health, and Burl Cain, corrections commissioner, said increasing pay for their employees is a key goal.

Bailey asked the Budget Committee members for a $26.6 million increase in general fund revenue to $247.7 million. A large part of the raise would go for salary increases.

She said the agency is having a difficult time  competing with fast food workers for primary care workers. And salary increases are needed for nurses and other advanced health care employees.

Bailey also asked for funds to continue to adhere to demands from a U.S. Department of Justice lawsuit to provide treatment when possible on the community level instead in state institutions.

The Department of Corrections is trying to avoid a Department of Justice lawsuit based on poor conditions in Mississippi prisons. The lack of adequate staff continues to be an area of concern for DOJ.

“We do not have adequate staffing to manage our population,” Cain said.

Cain is asking lawmakers for a $32-million increase to his budget. Most of that, about $20 million, would be to cover rising medical costs for inmates. About $7.5 million would be increased per diem paid to private prisons for state inmates.

Child Protection Services, the agency that runs the state’s long-troubled foster care system, is asking lawmakers for a $15 million increase, mostly to provide increased subsidies for people who adopt children in state custody.

Andrea Sanders, CPS commissioner, said Mississippi pays less – by about half — to families who adopt children from custody than it does to foster parents. Sanders says this incentivizes people to stay in the foster program rather than adopt children.

Sanders said that the federal government will match, at nearly one-to-one, the state funded subsidies for adoption.

“State agencies will always be a poor substitute for a family,” Sanders said.

The post Legislative leaders weigh impact of inflation, odds of recession appeared first on Mississippi Today.

A state education board wants lawmakers to take a different approach to financial aid programs intended to tackle Mississippi’s growing nursing shortage. 

Earlier this year, lawmakers created the Nursing and Respiratory Therapy Education Incentive Program, which would provide nurses with money for college if they agree to work in Mississippi for five years after they graduate. If a nurse reneged on the deal, they’d have to pay the money back with interest. 

This forgivable loan program would create more student debt in Mississippi and likely do little to address the nursing shortage, Mississippi Today reported earlier this year. 

It’s not yet up and running because it was too complicated for the Office of Student Financial Aid to implement this year. Now the program may never get off the ground. 

Members of the Postsecondary Education Financial Assistance Board on Wednesday unanimously voted to ask lawmakers to roll back the forgivable loan program and replace it with a stipend that would be awarded at the end of each year a nurse works in Mississippi. Nurses could use the funds to pay off federal student loans. 

The move reflects a shifting policy debate over Mississippi’s use of student loans to address labor shortages as well as the board’s desire to reduce the administrative burden on the seven-person office that would implement the program. 

“It is philosophically saying the state needs to back out of loans the way they’re currently structured,” said Jim Turcotte, the executive director of Mississippi College’s alumni association and the chairman of the Post-Secondary Board.  

Members also voted to approve rules and regulations for the forgivable loan program in the event this proposal does not find a “champion” in the Legislature. The board has faced trouble getting lawmakers to approve its requests in the past. 

For future nursing students in Mississippi, the bottom line is that a stipend program would help them pay off student debt while a forgivable loan program would be another way to take on even more debt. 

“We’re talking about somewhat of a subtle shift in a way of who’s holding the debt,” Turcotte said. 

Mississippi has long relied on forgivable loan programs to address labor shortages, said Jennifer Rogers, the director of the Office of Student Financial Aid. These programs, in theory, can fix labor shortages by using student debt as a tool to create more college graduates for a field that needs workers. 

To administer these programs, the state essentially has to become a bank, which means forgivable loans are a financial boon for Mississippi. Rogers said her office collects about $1 million each year from borrowers because the debt is only forgiven under two circumstances – death or permanent disability. 

“We have some on the books that date back to the late 1970s, before I was even born,” Rogers said. 

“We could continue to service those loans forever and ever and ever,” she added. 

While the state financially benefits, forgivable loans do little to address labor shortages. 

Rogers told the board this is particularly true for the state’s nursing shortage because it is not caused by a lack of Mississippians who desire to go to nursing school. In fact, nursing schools, lacking faculty, are forced to turn away thousands of applicants each year. 

“Students want to go to nursing school, they want to be nurses, but there’s still a nursing shortage in Mississippi,” Rogers said. “So what’s causing that shortage?” 

With the board’s preferred approach, a stipend program, Rogers said the state will see an immediate benefit. The stipend might even attract nurses from across the country, seeking help paying off student debt, to work in Mississippi hospitals.

“They’re immediately going to see students out working in the areas,” Rogers said. 

Barney Daly, a board member who is the president of North Metro at Trustmark National Bank, asked if there is a downside to a loan repayment or stipend program. 

Rogers replied that these programs don’t help students pay for school on the front end. 

After about a half hour of discussion, Turcotte called for a vote. He asked if the board wanted to talk about the proposal further and members seemed surprised no one had more to say, given how robust the discussion had been to that point.

“Is the horse dead?” Rogers asked. 

The post State board wants lawmakers to drop nursing loan program, create stipend instead appeared first on Mississippi Today.

The post Marshall Ramsey: Book It appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Undefeated Jackson State made short work of Grambling at The Vet, and Shedeur Sanders made a believer out of the elder Cleveland. The kid can play. The Cleveland boys also discuss Title IX and football at all levels – from high schools to the NFL with a lot of college football in between.

Stream all episodes here.

The post Podcast: Prime-time in Jackson and football everywhere appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Merit Health Central is struggling: services and units are closing or being moved, and current and former employees say the hospital is unable to maintain safe staffing levels. 

The private hospital, one of nine Merit Health facilities in the state, has already moved or is planning to move its cardiovascular services, neonatal intensive care unit and endoscopy to other Merit Health locations outside of Jackson. The hospital is also planning to “consolidate” its behavioral health beds, according to records with the Mississippi Department of Health, though it is unclear where. 

And the hospital garnered headlines in early September for announcing it would close its  burn center — the only such program in the state.

Meanwhile, several current and former staffers of the hospital interviewed by Mississippi Today said many employees have left or are seeking employment elsewhere, often leading to shifts that aren’t fully or properly staffed.

Merit Health Central declined Mississippi Today’s request for an interview for the story with someone in administration but provided several emailed statements.

“The five Jackson-area Merit Health hospitals share a commitment to serve residents of Jackson and the surrounding region,” said Jana Fuss, director of marketing at Merit Health. “We regularly review our operations and evaluate how we can best apply our resources to offer needed services and strengthen our operations.”

The hospital’s struggles could have an outsized effect on the livelihood of many Jacksonians and those who live in rural parts of Hinds County. Merit Health Central, formerly Hinds General Hospital, has long been a health care and employment hub in south and west Jackson — majority-Black neighborhoods that have a higher concentration of people living in poverty than the rest of the city.

According to U.S. Census data, the neighborhood the hospital is located in is 87% Black and 9% white. The median income for families is $29,500. 

In contrast, Merit Health River Oaks in Flowood, where many services are being moved, is 61% white and 28% Black. Its median income is $46,389 — 57% higher than the south Jackson neighborhood. 

State Sen. Sollie Norwood, D-Jackson, whose district includes Merit Health Central, had not heard about any changes at the hospital other than the closing of the burn unit. He said he fears what a drastic change would mean for the residents he represents.

“We don’t need to reduce the accessibility of (health care) at this time,” Norwood said. 

The Jackson hospital reported the largest amount of net uninsured costs, or cost of services for which the patient had no insurance coverage, of any of the Merit Health hospitals in the state for fiscal year 2022. The hospital reported nearly $16 million in net uninsured costs. The next-highest, Merit Health Biloxi, reported just $7.9 million. 

The hospital is owned by the county and leased by Merit Health’s Nashville-based parent company, Community Health Systems. Community Health Systems made headlines recently for its financial challenges: the company reported a $327 million net loss in the first half of 2022, and Fitch Ratings downgraded the company’s rating outlook from stable to negative. 

Fuss declined to answer questions about how that has impacted Merit Central specifically.

She pointed to the COVID-19 pandemic and the “challenging staffing and recruitment environment” as contributors to the closing of the burn center. They have made it difficult to hire the specialists needed to run the burn program, she said, adding that the hospital has been in discussions with other regional providers interested in potentially establishing such a program.  

On top of the ongoing problems, the hospital, which runs on city water, recently hemorrhaged money bringing in water tankers amid the city’s months-long boil water notice.

Mississippi Today spoke with several current and former staffers at Merit Central for this story. None of the employees were willing to speak on the record because they feared retribution from their current or future employers.

One employee said the hospital staff is “dwindling,” and most employees are looking for jobs elsewhere. 

“People in various departments (who) have been told they will likely be impacted are leaving for other opportunities, and it is because they feel there will no longer be opportunities here… We have basically been told since this came to light that it will be predominantly a psych facility,” she said. 

Rumors are swirling at Merit Central that the long term plan for the hospital is to transition to a majority psychiatric facility, and records from the Mississippi Department of Health also show the hospital intends to “consolidate” its behavioral health beds.

The facility currently has 71 behavioral health beds with an occupancy rate of around 80%, according to state health department records from 2020. 

The hospital had been struggling before the pandemic, but things got worse during it, according to three former employees who worked in the emergency department but have since left.

They said staffing levels were, at times, unsafe – so much so that on certain occasions when the next shift’s nurses arrived to take over, they would refuse.

“There were several instances where we didn’t have – we didn’t know how to give reports because you were going to be handing a 20-bed ER to one nurse,” one former employee said. 

The hospital terminated its contracts with travel nurse staffing agencies, including a local agency, the employees said. At the same time, the hospital decreased the remaining nurses’ pay and took away incentives – an unusual move at a time when most other hospitals were offering financial incentives to battle the nursing shortage exacerbated by the pandemic.  

The result was severe understaffing, several employees told Mississippi Today, and the nurses who remained were frustrated and overwhelmed. Instead of the six to seven nurses previously covering each ER shift, there were between one and four, they said.  

“It caused frustrations, it caused further burnout, it caused some nurses to retire completely from nursing, and it caused a lot of other nurses who worked at Central to leave,” one nurse said. 

In response to questions about staffing, Fuss said the hospital is “working hard to recruit and retain permanent employees rather than relying on costly contract labor” and, as a result, services have been consolidated as a result. 

“As part of our work to retain employees, in select areas we have implemented market wage adjustments, added a student loan repayment program, increased our education reimbursement program, and covered the cost of any necessary licensure or training that is not already offered to employees at no cost to them,” she said in an emailed statement. 

Before the pandemic, the nurses said, the hospital was taking an inordinate amount of transfer patients – a sign they took to mean the hospital was desperate to bring in revenue.

“They would take every transfer from every outside hospital, utilized every room (in the ER) for admission holds that it got to the point where half of our ER capacity was admissions … We all kind of felt weird about the patients getting an inpatient bill, but they weren’t even making it upstairs (to the hospital floor) for 24 to 48 hours,” one nurse said.

Norwood, the state senator, said he plans to reach out to hospital officials this week and hopefully meet with them to “take a deeper dive into exactly what’s happening.”

One former employee has a guess as to what’s at play.

“I think a lot of it is contributed by business suits that work hundreds of miles away. People who are trying to answer mostly to shareholders rather than trying to treat a community,” the former nurse said.

The post Merit Health Central is moving many services from Jackson to the suburbs. Employees wonder what’s next appeared first on Mississippi Today.

The contract dispute between the state’s largest insurer and hospital is still not resolved more than three months after the two parties began mediation proceedings.

Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Mississippi and University of Mississippi Medical Center have been locked in a dispute over reimbursement rates throughout 2022. The Medical Center went out of network with Blue Cross on March 31, and since then, thousands of Mississippians have been forced to take on higher out-of-pocket costs for their health care or leave the state for certain specialty care.

The two parties agreed to utilize a mediation process to settle the dispute in April after Insurance Commissioner Mike Chaney urged them to do so. 

“The commissioner (Mike Chaney) is certainly very hopeful that the parties can make great progress, if not find a resolution, by early June,” Mark Haire, deputy commissioner of insurance, told Mississippi Today in early May.

Evidently, that hope was misplaced.

Patrice Guilfoyle, director of communications at UMMC, told Mississippi Today on Tuesday that there’s “no update at this point” on mediation proceedings. Blue Cross did not respond to requests for comment by the time of publication. 

Chaney told Mississippi Today he has not had any contact with either party or the mediator relating to mediation since before Sept. 5. Under state agency rules, Chaney is not allowed to directly mediate or help settle disputes over contacts between insurance companies and health care providers. 

There is no requirement the two parties come to an agreement.

A targeted market conduct examination of Blue Cross that Chaney ordered on July 1 is ongoing. The examination is to determine whether the insurer is in compliance with the state’s network adequacy regulations since UMMC provides specialty care that cannot be found elsewhere in Mississippi.

Chaney told Mississippi Today on Tuesday that the network adequacy review is nearly complete but cannot be finished until UMMC provides his office with materials that have been subpoenaed.

“It (the network adequacy review) will probably be surprising to a lot of folks,” Chaney said.

Blue Cross sued top UMMC employees on July 28 over the public relations campaign the hospital has been waging against the insurer due to their contract dispute. The insurer claims the campaign was “designed to disseminate false and defamatory statements about Blue Cross to the public.”

In advertisements and public statements made by employees, the claim was made that the insurer “excluded” UMMC from its network of providers, though it was UMMC who voluntarily allowed its contract with Blue Cross to expire. 

It is unclear how that lawsuit has impacted the progress of mediation proceedings. 

The post Nearly four months in, still no developments in mediation between UMMC and Blue Cross appeared first on Mississippi Today.