Is it time to rush some legislation to state hospitals?

There’s not enough time to rush legislation to the state’s rural hospitals.
The last day for bills in the Legislature to advance out of their house of origin to the other chamber occurs Wednesday.
This week, Fairmont Regional Medical Center announced it was closing in the next 60 days.
Clearly, that announcement caught most public officials off guard. But a quick look at the handwriting on the wall, no, make that the red flags waving high and wide signaled big trouble in “little” hospitals months, if not years, ago.
The trend of smaller hospitals being forced to attach a lifeline in partnerships to larger hospital systems and other larger umbrella organizations started years ago, including the former Fairmont General Hospital.
Other hospital mergers, such as Cabell Huntington Hospital and St. Mary’s Medical Center — only 3 miles apart — completed in May 2018, was another sign.
Then came the announcement of the closure of the Ohio Valley Medical Center in Wheeling in August, costing hundreds of job. Soon after, Williamson Memorial Hospital filed for bankruptcy, costing another 20 jobs.
Then Thomas Memorial Hospital in South Charleston announced in early January it would also reorganize through bankruptcy.
In a recent interview with MetroNews, the CEO of the West Virginia Hospital Association, said “There are others on the bubble. We could be hearing news sometime this month, next month. I keep hearing there’s going to be some news coming out of these hospitals.”
We did look to see if any bills were introduced in the Legislature during the ongoing regular session.
But the closest we came to legislation was the Save the Hospitals Act — HB 2375 — which has yet to emerge from the original committee it was assigned to Jan. 8. Its lone sponsor proposed exempting nonprofit hospitals that provide a certain amount of uncompensated care from sales taxes.
All told there are about 180 bills before the Legislature relating to health care. Only a dozen actually address hospitals, and only that one addresses their financial woes.
To his credit, the governor created the Rural Medicine Task Force last fall following OVMC’s closure, but for now that’s at best a Band-Aid.
As legislators were busying themselves with spurring economic development, hospital and emergency care were never part of that equation.
Hospitals around the state on the brink of bankruptcy, takeover and closure are not a prescription for health care, let alone growth and economic development.
It’s apparent this crisis was not on the Legislature’s radar despite the increasing number of blips.
Could there be a special session on the horizon rushing aid to struggling hospitals?
It may not be a cure but it probably could do no harm.