Another community forum was held Tuesday as the Nov. 7 referendum vote to determine the future of OCH Regional Medical Center draws closer.
The Coalition of Concerned Citizens of Oktibbeha County held its forum at the Travis Outlaw Center. Most of the crowd present was in support of the sale of OCH, although both sides of the debate were represented.
District 5 Supervisor Joe Williams, a supporter of the sale of the hospital and District 3 Supervisor Marvell Howard, a staunch opponent of the sale, spoke at the forum and took questions from citizens.
Williams said OCH becoming part of a larger hospital system like Baptist Memorial Health Care or North Mississippi Medical Center would bring better medical care to Starkville and bring in medical specialties currently not offered at OCH.
“Normally, I ask individuals, ‘if you had the choice to go to OCH or to go to North Mississippi Medical Center in Tupelo,’ I’m sorry, but they tell me they’d rather go to North Mississippi in Tupelo,” Williams said. “With that in mind, we feel like we will have better healthcare as a result of selling OCH to some of the best in the business. We didn’t receive proposals from someone you wouldn’t depend on, that you didn’t believe in. I think everybody in here to some degree believes in Baptist and believes in North Mississippi Medical Center. In other words, we got the A-team.”
Williams also said he supported the sale of OCH due to the county’s budget being stretched thin.
“In terms of millage, we fund OCH almost to the same degree that we fund road construction,” Williams said.
Howard said he was concerned by both Baptist and North Mississippi saying patients from outside Oktibbeha County would form a big part of their OCH business models.
“All this you’re hearing about what you’re going to get, and what’s going to happen, really and truly, nothing is settled,” Howard said. “One of my sticking points was this. If I’m going to sell the hospital, I want better health care. I want to grow the hospital. My question was ‘how are you going to grow the hospital? The answer was this. ‘Well, we think we’ll be able to grow the hospital because of the southern counties. We think we can get more patients from the southern counties.”’
OCH President and CEO Richard Hilton said both North Mississippi and Baptist's proposals were not complete, and would most likely be kept secret until after the referendum due to the systems being in competition with each other.
"They don't want to tip too much of what they're going to do specifically because it will let the other one know," Hilton said. "I would imagine both of them are going to be talking one-on-one with the supervisors by themselves. They don't want to tip their hand."
Most of the concerns raised about OCH at the forum centered on its finances and the lack of certain medical specialties.
“What do we suffer the most from in the Deep South, heart attack, stroke and diabetes,” said Starkville resident Shirley Hanshaw. “We have neither a neurologist nor a cardiologist here. My father had congestive heart failure. We had to take him to Memphis. My mother had a stroke and seizures. We had to take her to Jackson.”
Hanshaw also said she thought adding OCH to an established hospital system would improve the scope of care in the county and expressed concerns about a lack of diversity among OCH physicians.
“We can make good better for all the residents of Oktibbeha County regardless of their racial or ethnic groups,” Hanshaw said.
Oktibbeha County NAACP President Chris Taylor expressed concern about the wording of the referendum on the sample ballot, which could be interpreted to mean the hospital may still be sold even if the referendum failed.
"Let me clarify this," Taylor said. "Both of them at the end say with and option to sell the county hospital. If I vote against the selling (of OCH), the way I read this, couldn't the board still sell the hospital? That's all I want to know."