A Greenville hospital closed its neonatal intensive care unit in July after the unit reported losses of $1 million a year.
Now, there is no longer a NICU in the Mississippi Delta.
Delta Health-The Medical Center, which is currently operating with only one medical floor, also closed its cardiac rehabilitation department. It and the NICU are “non-revenue producing ventures,” said interim CEO Iris Yeldell-Stacker in an Aug. 1 presentation to the Washington County Board of Supervisors.
Hospital officials told Mississippi Today that operating the NICU created annual losses for the hospital of $1 million. An average of 150 newborns have been placed in the NICU each year since 2019.
The hospital serves four Delta counties: Bolivar, Coahoma, Sunflower and Washington – all counties with poverty levels over 30%, well above both the state and national average.
“Infants that require care in the NICU will be transferred, as they always have been,” Amy Walker, chief nursing officer at Delta Health System, said. “This will likely cause a hardship on the families of the infant as they will have to travel to Jackson to be with their baby for what could be a lengthy hospital stay. We will still provide a well baby nursery for babies delivered here, and can provide things like IV fluids and limited antibiotic therapy for those babies.”
The NICU’s closure shocked many employees who saw it as a valuable asset, said an employee who asked to remain anonymous in the story for fear of retribution from the hospital. The employee said the hope for the unit was to break even, not turn a profit, but that this proved impossible due to a lower than expected number of transfers from surrounding communities.
The NICU was classified as a level II, meaning it could provide some intensive care for sick and premature infants, such as those who required respirator support or those who were born experiencing drug withdrawals. The hospital transferred an average of 16 babies per year to Children’s of Mississippi’s level IV NICU, the only unit in the state with this designation.
Now, all babies born in the Delta that require NICU care will be sent to Children’s of Mississippi in Jackson or go out of state.
The hospital’s NICU was being managed by Children’s of Mississippi when it closed. University of Mississippi Medical Center officials said they had no comment for the story. They also declined Mississippi Today’s request to interview the doctors and nurses who managed the unit.
Further operational changes are likely in Delta Health System’s future because of its dire financial state. The entire system has a current income of negative $13.2 million for 2022, according to Yeldell-Stacker. Its Greenville hospital is responsible for $334,000 of these losses, while the rest were attributed to Delta Health System’s other medical centers and groups.
Yeldell-Stacker cited increased operating costs, mostly coming from an increase in contact labor. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the hospital paid nurses between $40 and $55 per hour, whereas contact nurses cost between $155 to $175 per hour.
The hospital also received a $14 million loan from Medicare early in the pandemic, which Yeldell-Stacker said they are paying back to the tune of $1 million per month, further dragging down its finances.
The first woman judge of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi has joined the bench.
A formal investiture ceremony was held last week for Judge Kristi Haskins Johnson of Brandon.
The court congratulates U. S. District Judge Kristi Haskins Johnson on her investiture last week. She is the first female U. S. District Judge in the Southern District of Mississippi. pic.twitter.com/MnBTTY2Cg4
“This truly was a lifelong dream of mine,” Johnson said about her appointment in a February 2021 article by her alma mater, the University of Mississippi.
She was confirmed by the U.S. Senate in Nov. 2020 by a 53 to 43 vote.
Johnson previously worked as Mississippi’s first solicitor general. She also worked for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Jackson as an assistant U.S. attorney.
From 2008 to 2010, Johnson clerked for Judge Sharion Aycock of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Mississippi — the state’s first woman federal district court judge. Johnson also clerked for Judge Leslie Southwick of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
Elected officials including Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, the first woman to represent Mississippi in Congress, and Attorney General Lynn Fitch, the first woman in her role, praised Johnson after her Senate confirmation.
“Judge Johnson, as you exercise your power, I pray that God will grant you wisdom, humility, compassion and courage. Congratulations!” Hyde-Smith wrote in a Friday tweet after she attended Johnson’s investiture ceremony.
When Scott Crawford goes to see his neurologist at St. Dominic Memorial Hospital in Jackson, he travels down State Street to Fondren and then rolls his wheelchair along Lakeland Drive. A glass pedestrian bridge suspended above the street connects the parking garage to the hospital – but he can’t access it.
Instead, he’s forced to steer his wheelchair across eight lanes of high-speed traffic at an intersection with no pedestrian signal.
St. Dominic locks the door that links the garage to the sidewalk, which shuts out Crawford and other patients who don’t drive. He can’t safely access the garage the way people in cars do, because the vehicle entrance consists of a steeply sloping road with no sidewalk.
Crawford, who has multiple sclerosis, does not drive because he experiences spasms that would make it unsafe for himself and others.
Hospital employees told him that the door from the sidewalk to the garage must remain locked for “safety reasons.”
St. Dominic is violating federal law including the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) by forcing non-drivers in wheelchairs to navigate a treacherous path while able-bodied people with cars enjoy easy access to the hospital, claims a lawsuit filed by the organization Disability Rights Mississippi in late July.
Disability Rights, the state’s nonprofit “protection and advocacy system,” charged by Congress with advocating for the rights of people with disabilities, filed the lawsuit after Crawford spent more than a year reaching out to the hospital with his concerns. He created multi-page PDF documents describing his journey step by step, with photographs and citations of the ADA.
“They cared enough to build the bridge,” he said. “Why not care enough to at least welcome all visitors to it?”
Meredith V. Bailess, senior director of marketing at St. Dominic, said in an email that the hospital’s attorneys had not been aware of the lawsuit before Mississippi Today reached out for comment.
“We are looking into the items raised in the complaint,” she said.
She added that the hospital could comment further “once we receive and review the formal complaint.”
Polly Tribble, executive director of Disability Rights Mississippi, said St. Dominic had not yet been served with the lawsuit, but that will take place this week. The lawsuit was filed July 28.
If the hospital is concerned about car break-ins, Tribble said, denying access to the pedestrian bridge is not the solution.
“There’s some easy remedies for that,” she said. ‘They used to have a security guard there that would patrol around the parking garage, that kind of thing. So it’s a safety issue but it’s also just a humane access issue for people that need it.”
Motorists stop at a traffic light at the intersection of North Curran and Lakeland Drives in Jackson, Miss., Friday, August 19, 2022. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi Today
A retired clinical neuropsychologist with a PhD from the University of Southern Mississippi, Crawford moved to Jackson in late 2006 to be closer to family. He learned that the city’s JATRAN buses weren’t accessible to people in wheelchairs and filed a lawsuit that forced the city of Jackson to ensure buses were equipped with wheelchair lifts and designate an ADA coordinator in the planning department, among other reforms.
Crawford is an advocate for pedestrian safety. He’s also a member of the City of Jackson’s Americans with Disabilities Act Advisory Council and a board member of the Mississippi Coalition for Citizens with Disabilities.
So when he first encountered the locked door to the pedestrian bridge in 2014, he knew how to advocate for himself and other wheelchair users and non-drivers. In January of that year, he reached out to Commander Orange Young at the hospital’s security office to explain his concerns.
“The mantra in the disability community is educate or litigate,” he said. “So I try very, very hard to educate.”
After months of back and forth, he received a letter from hospital risk and safety manager K. Jerry Farr in March 2015. Farr explained that the security department had unlocked the door after Crawford’s initial outreach, but locked it again after “a vehicle break in was recorded and access to the garagae (sic) was traced to that door.” But the hospital was putting a timer on the door to keep it unlocked during the day, Farr said.
For years after that, Crawford had no problems accessing the pedestrian bridge.
But in March 2021, he found that the door was locked again. Crawford said one hospital employee said the door was locked because “Homeless people are camping out in the garage.”
The street-level entrance to St. Dominic’s parking garage in Jackson, Miss. Friday, August 19, 2022. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi Today
Over the next 14 months, he contacted Commander Orange Young and the hospital’s vice president and general counsel Jonathan Werne to describe his inability to access the pedestrian bridge every time he visited the hospital.
“As we have previously explained to you, due to safety reasons, the outside access door to the parking garage on the North side of Lakeland Drive has been closed to all individuals,” Werne wrote in May 2022. “The parking garage itself is still open to all visitors. Anyone can access the pedestrian bridge through the parking garage.”
But because he doesn’t drive, Crawford has no way to access the parking garage without rolling down a steep road that has no sidewalks.
Werne said Crawford could call hospital security to open the door for him when he gets there. Because of his multiple sclerosis, however, Crawford has dysphonia, which makes it painful for him to raise his voice to be heard over the traffic on Lakeland Drive.
“They think it’s OK for me to just give them a call and then wait for them to come and open the door for me,” Crawford told Mississippi Today. “Well, that’s not what the ADA calls for. ADA calls for independent access.”
When Mississippi Today visited St. Dominic on a recent weekday morning, the door to the garage from the street was locked, and there was no sign explaining who to call to get inside.
Two able-bodied reporters made the street crossing Crawford must undertake in his wheelchair; it took 13 seconds and both had to start jogging to get across the street before the light changed. Without a pedestrian crossing sign, it was difficult to tell when it was safe to start crossing.
Despite the locked door at street level, anyone could get into the parking garage by accessing the pedestrian bridge from the hospital side. A Mississippi Today reporter also found she could use the vehicle entrance to walk inside the parking garage, but the slope was steep and there was little room to avoid passing cars.
Crawford sees in St. Dominic’s stance not only a lack of regard for the safety of people with disabilities but also a presumption that individuals without cars are likelier to cause trouble. He believes that conflicts with the hospital’s mission to “create a spirit of healing… with humility and justice for all those entrusted to our care.”
“St. Dominic was thoughtful enough to provide a safe route crossing Lakeland, but it is profoundly insensitive to deprive pedestrians access to that safety,” Crawford wrote to St. Dominic officials on Aug. 10, 2021. “Are people that either cannot drive, or simply choose not to, unworthy of the same trust you afford everyone else? In short, opening the pedestrian bridge to those that drive, but *NOT* those who walk or roll is offensive in the extreme, and conduct unbecoming a faith-based institution such as yours.”
Brandon Presley of Nettleton will host a political fundraiser on Thursday featuring a diverse and noteworthy group of donors — especially noteworthy for a campaign for the down-ticket office of Northern District Public Service commissioner.
The fundraiser, which will be held in Tupelo at the birthplace and museum of Brandon Presley’s famous cousin Elvis, will net at least $209,000, based on the level of commitment of donors listed on an invitation card.
Whether the 94 people named on the fundraiser invitation are donating to Presley’s 2023 reelection campaign to the three-member Public Service Commission or to another post is not clear.
Presley has long been rumored as a possible Democratic candidate for governor — presumably against Republican incumbent Tate Reeves in 2023.
But Presley still is publicly non-committal.
“I am concentrating on trying to get internet to every household in the state, trying to keep utility rates affordable during this time of high inflation,” Presley told Mississippi Today. “I am trying to work on things that make a difference for average Mississippians.”
He also has been active in trying to ensure all Mississippians have access to safe water.
If Presley does opt to run for governor, presumably against Reeves, the Democrat will need multiple fundraising efforts like what will be held at the Elvis birthplace and museum on Thursday.
In each of his five statewide campaigns, Reeves has had overwhelming fundraising advantages over his opponents. In his 2019 campaign for governor, Reeves outspent his Democratic opponent, former Attorney General Jim Hood, $15.6 million to $5.2 million.
But interestingly, a handful of members of Reeves’ 2019 Finance Committee are listed as donors for Presley’s Thursday fund-raiser in Tupelo. They include Amory businessman Barry Wax, Johnny Crane of Fulton and Colin Maloney of Tupelo.
Wax, a longtime Republican donor, is listed as donating at least $10,000 for the Tupelo fundraiser and donated $25,000 to Presley during calendar year 2021.
Based on the January campaign finance filings with the Mississippi Secretary of State’s office, Reeves had $4.8 million in cash on hand compared to $520,000 for Presley. At the same time period before the 2019 gubernatorial election, Hood had $656,393 cash on hand while Reeves, then lieutenant governor, had $5.4 million.
But among the standouts of Presley’s fundraising to date is the number of Republicans who have written him checks.
Of the campaign donors, “We are fortunate to include a large group of Republicans and we always appreciate the support of all the solid Democrats and the independents,” Presley said. “I have always tried to be the type of elected official who reaches across the aisle to try to find solutions … I have tried not to get caught up in the echo chamber.”
Presley added, the donors “are people I know.”
The next filing of campaign finance reports is not scheduled until January 2023. But in 2023, an election year, there will be many more required filing of campaign finance reports with the Secretary of State’s office.
The history of Southern rock music is set to be explored in a new exhibit opening at GRAMMY Museum® Mississippi in Cleveland, Miss., on Sept. 30, 2022.
Curated by Bob Santelli and the Mississippi Museum, The Sounds of Southern Rock will spotlight the bands and artists who were integral in the development of the genre, including the Allman Brothers Band, Lynyrd Skynyrd, the Charlie Daniels Band, Little Feat, the Outlaws, Molly Hatchet, and more.
A partnership with Hard Rock International, the exhibit will be on display in the Museum’s Special Exhibits Gallery through the fall 2023. Additional sponsors include Visit Cleveland, Gertrude C. Ford Foundation, Quality Steel Corporation, and Visit Mississippi. The exhibit’s opening events will be announced soon.
“The Southern rock genre exploded in the 1970s as an extension of an already long and vibrant Southern music heritage that encompassed blues, country, gospel, R&B, and even big band jazz,” said exhibit curator Bob Santelli. “This exhibit will explore how Southern rock rose to become one of the most popular genres of the decade and will spotlight the bands who made it famous, including the Allman Brothers Band and Lynyrd Skynyrd.
While Southern rock’s heyday ended with the plane crash that took the lives of members of Lynyrd Skynyrd, the genre lives on in the hearts and minds of music fans everywhere.”
“Of the many contributions that the South made to American music, the Southern rock genre is one of them,” said Emily Havens, Executive Director of GRAMMY Museum Mississippi. “This exhibit will provide a unique and in-depth look at the genre and the bands who made it famous. We can’t wait to share these important stories of Southern rock bands with our museum visitors, and we thank Hard Rock International for their partnership to help bring this exhibit to life.”
Artifacts on display in the exhibit will include:
Duane Allman’s and Dickey Betts’ Gibson guitars
Ed King’s Fender Stratocaster with custom-made shell picks
Charlie Daniels’ acoustic/electric Barcus Berry fiddle
Original sheet music for “Green Grass and High Tides” by Hughie Thomasson
Lynyrd Skynyrd drummer, Michael Cartellone’s Pearl drum set
Vintage concert posters, stage outfits and much more
Many of the artifacts on display in the exhibit have been provided by Hard Rock International, as well as the private estates of Charlie Daniels, the Allman Brothers and Ed King of Lynyrd Skynyrd.
Additional sponsors include Mitchell Signs, Coopwood Communications, and the Maddox Foundation.
Brandon Presley, a Democratic public service commissioner and cousin of Elvis Presley, is mulling a run for governor in 2023. Mississippi Today’s political team discusses what he is up to and what’s going on with Republicans.
State legislative leaders spent an inordinate amount of time in 2017 passing the Medicaid and Human Services Transparency and Fraud Prevention Act to put in place additional reporting requirements and other safeguards to ensure poor Mississippians were not getting benefits some feared they did not deserve.
“We (Mississippians) have the second-lowest work participation rate in the country,” Jameson Taylor, then vice president for policy research with the Mississippi Center for Public Policy, told the Heartland Institute at the time. “Welfare is a trap. We want to help move people from dependency to dignity, and from poverty to prosperity. That’s what these reforms do. They will also save the state money by kicking fraudsters off our rolls.”
Around the same time that legislators and others were concerned about fraud related to poor Mississippians who were receiving government assistance, $1.3 million in welfare funds were diverted to then-Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves’ fitness trainer, Paul Lacoste, who used $300,000 of those funds to pay himself a salary and another $70,000 to purchase a truck, according to the state auditor.
Additionally, $5 million was spent to build a volleyball court at the University of Southern Mississippi, and $1 million went to pay NFL and USM standout quarterback Brett Favre for speaking engagements that he did not make. Other welfare funds went to invest in drug research at the behest of Favre — with the blessings of former Gov. Phil Bryant. The list goes on and on and on. As much as $92 million in welfare funds could have been misspent, according to a 2020 state audit.
But legislators have yet to devote even a tiny fraction of the time addressing those misspent funds as the time they spent on the Medicaid and Human Services Transparency and Fraud Prevention Act, which was signed into law by then-Gov. Bryant and supported by Reeves, who then was lieutenant governor and is now governor.
In fairness to the Legislature, it should be pointed out that finally in the 2021 session, the welfare benefit for poor families was increased from $170 to $260 per month for a family of four. Those funds are earmarked for children and their caregivers.
Based on research done by Mississippi Today, less than 3,000 poor state residents normally receive cash benefits through the program. A study by Mississippi Today found only 5% of Mississippi’s federal block grant welfare funds went for monthly cash assistance. And until the legislation was passed in 2021, those monthly benefits for the poorest of the poor — paid entirely with federal welfare funds — were the lowest in the nation.
These are the same welfare benefits that were used to pay for the volleyball court, the fitness program and multiple other programs designed to help the supporters of Bryant, Reeves and others.
When the Medicaid and Human Services Transparency and Fraud Prevention Act was passed in 2017, one of the concerns cited was that there were dead people on the Medicaid rolls.
During debate in the Senate, then-Sen. Bill Stone, a Democrat from Holly Springs, asked of Medicaid Chair Brice Wiggins, R-Pascagoula, “Are you talking about dead people on the rolls for Medicaid?”
Wiggins responded, “I am talking about everybody, yes. It doesn’t matter if it is dead people. It doesn’t matter if it is people double dipping. They need to be following the law.”
The benefit a Medicaid recipient receives is health care. The state Division of Medicaid pays the providers — such as doctors, hospitals and nursing homes — for providing care. Medicaid recipients do not receive any cash payments, just health care.
It is difficult to envision a person assuming the identity of a dead person on Medicaid and then going to the doctor to receive health care. Perhaps it has happened.
No doubt, Wiggins, then the chair of the Senate Medicaid Committee, knew it would be unlikely for dead people to be receiving Medicaid benefits, but just got twisted up in his explanation since the bill dealt with making sure poor people were not cheating both the Medicaid program and the Department of Human Services. And as cited earlier, some poor Mississippians do receive cash benefits through Human Services — just not very many and not very much.
Medicaid, on the other hand, is a state-federal program that provides health care for the disabled, poor pregnant women, poor children and the elderly. Most adults are not eligible for Medicaid in Mississippi.
There is a small percentage of adult caregivers of Medicaid recipients, earning less than $578 monthly for a family of four, who are eligible for Medicaid.
If Mississippi expanded Medicaid, like 38 states have, other adults, primarily the working poor, would be eligible.
But dead people need not apply. In Mississippi, it is difficult enough for living poor people to garner help.
Mississippi Today has compiled data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to answer frequently asked questions about monkeypox and its presence in Mississippi.
According to the CDC, monkeypox is a rare disease caused by infection with the monkeypox virus, in the same family as the virus that causes smallpox. Before 2022, most monkeypox cases were traced back to central and western Africa; cases outside of the continent were related to international travel or imported animals.
Monkeypox can spread through close contact, including contact with rashes, scabs, fluids or respiratory secretions from someone with the disease. Contact also includes touching fabrics or surfaces someone infected has interacted with.
Intimate or sexual contact and even hugging, massaging, kissing or prolonged face-to-face contact can spread the virus.
Monkeypox can spread from a pregnant person to the fetus through the placenta, and bites, scratches, meat or other byproducts from animals can transfer the virus.
What do monkeypox symptoms look like?
Within three weeks of exposure, monkeypox symptoms can appear, most notably rashes — which may appear near the genitals, hands and other parts of the body — that go through several stages of appearing and healing, which can be painful and itchy. If flu-like symptoms start, a rash will likely develop up to four days later. Spread can occur from the start of symptoms until the skin has fully formed a new layer after healing.
Primarily, avoid any contact with someone who has monkeypox or appears to have the rashes associated with the disease, including any objects they may have interacted with. And as always, wash your hands often, and use alcohol-based hand sanitizer.
Furthermore, similarly to COVID-19 vaccines, there is a two-dose and single-dose vaccine available for monkeypox, although MSDH only offers the two-dose version. But, the CDC recognizes the two-dose monkeypox vaccine, JYNNEOS, as the preferred version as it has less potential for side effects that could affect someone with a weaker or compromised immune system. JYNNEOS reaches maximum immune protection two weeks after the second dose.
Earlier this month, MSDH announced it would be expanding the eligibility criteria for receiving a monkeypox vaccine to include LGBTQ+ Mississippians at risk of infection.
They have been notified or are aware of close, intimate or sexual contact with someone diagnosed with monkeypox.
Or they identify as gay, bisexual, or as other men who have sex with men, or as a transgender individual, and they report having multiple or anonymous sex partners, or having attended an event or venue where monkeypox may have been transmitted (for instance, by sex or skin-to-skin contact).
What should I do if I believe I have contracted monkeypox?
No specific treatment yet exists for monkeypox, but most individuals recover within a month or less without the need for treatment. The severity of how sick one becomes ultimately determines what kind of treatment or management is needed.
Otherwise, here are some ways to manage symptoms while you recover:
Cover your rashes and scars with gauze or bandages to limit spread; wear (preferably disposable) gloves when handling or touching objects and surfaces in shared spaces; besides showering or bathing, keep rashes clean and dry
Do not pop or scratch lesions, which can spread the infection to other people and other parts of the infected individual’s body; do not shave until the intended area is free of scabs and new skin has formed
Wear a well-fitting mask — N95 or similar quality with an adjustable nose bridge — while around others
Typical ibuprofen and acetaminophen brands help with pain
Rinse rashes in the mouth at least four times a day with salt water
Pets can contract the virus as well, so if you believe or know you have monkeypox, ask a friend or family member to keep the pet until you recover and disinfect your home.
