A rural hospital in northwest Georgia, burdened by a heavy debt load and large financial losses, is set to close Dec. 4. Hutcheson Medical Center in Fort Oglethorpe would be the fifth rural Georgia hospital to shut its doors since 2013. A bankruptcy court judge issued the order for the closure this week, the Chattanooga…
While health care across rural Georgia has many shortcomings, Hancock County has languished at the more desperate end. Located between Atlanta and Augusta, the county — named for the Founding Father who made history with his signature — has been marked by economic troubles for years. Its 9,400 residents have no hospital and no community…
The number of uninsured children in Georgia dropped by nearly 50,000 after the full implementation of the Affordable Care Act in 2014, a new report has found. But the state’s 189,000 children who remain uninsured make Georgia’s rate relatively high – 7.6 percent, versus 6 percent nationally. The report from Georgetown University Health Policy Institute’s…
Patients such as D.C. are known in health care circles as “frequent fliers,” a term that has nothing to do with airline miles. D.C. (his initials), 62, has been to Appling Healthcare’s emergency room in the South Georgia town of Baxley several times this year with various ailments. He has no health insurance and no…
Georgia’s uninsured rate in 2014 fell by three percentage points, to 15.8 percent, mirroring a national trend linked to new coverage from the Affordable Care Act, the U.S. Census Bureau reported Wednesday. But Georgia’s percentage of people without coverage last year was the fourth-highest in the nation, trailing only Texas, Alaska and Florida. Nationally, the…
The state’s Medicaid agency has all but ruled out Grady Health System’s “waiver’’ proposal to cover more uninsured Georgians. “We’re not going to move forward on this at this time,’’ Clyde Reese, commissioner of the Department of Community Health, said at an agency board meeting Thursday. He cited “significant costs to the state” to implement…
Two-thirds of Georgia hospitals will receive Medicare fines for having too many discharged patients return within a month for additional care, federal data show. The 67 percent of Georgia hospitals facing penalties is higher than the national average of 54 percent, according to a Kaiser Health News analysis. The readmission penalties, launched as part of…
Most rural Georgia residents in a new survey say they have experienced problems with the affordability of health insurance and the cost of health care. When asked the biggest problem facing local health care, 68 percent named cost, with quality of care and access to care trailing far behind, according to the survey of 491…
Doug Taffe of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., traveled hundreds of miles north to central Georgia over the weekend to work as a volunteer at a free dental clinic. His volunteer stint at the event in Perry was a form of repayment. Two years ago, Taffe was in a motorcycle accident and sustained severe damage to his…
The state’s main health agency says it’s analyzing a new plan to cover more uninsured Georgians through a special Medicaid “waiver’’ program. Gov. Nathan Deal “has asked us to work on it,’’ Clyde Reese, commissioner of the state Department of Community Health, said Thursday. The plan for a Medicaid waiver was generated by Grady Health…