Financial struggle continues for Bucktail Medical Center
by Barbara Mastriania
SOUTH RENOVO – Bucking withheld funding payments and rumors of closure, Bucktail Medical Center officials continue the struggle to stay current with finances and provide medical service to the Renovo area population.
BMC is currently in Chapter 11 Bankruptcy and in critical financial straits. While the bankruptcy is not a result of the delayed funding, the lack of the funding — including 51 percent that’s already been allocated by the federal government — greatly affects the future of the medical center. And concern about BMC’s future is fodder for rumors circulating that the center will close April 1.
Bucktail Medical Center administrator Tim Reeves said this week the rumors of closing on April 1 are just not true. He said that he doesn’t know how or where the rumor started, but there’s no truth to it. That doesn’t mean the center is isn’t in financial trouble.
Reeves is asking area residents, business leaders and officials to contact state legislators to do their jobs, to do the right thing and forward disproportionate share funds due to the medical for services it has provided in the past two years.
Reeves spoke to a group of area leaders and business people this week and said if the facility does not get funds it is due, the center’s future could be in jeopardy. In addition to speaking to area organizations, he’s also written op-ed articles for publications.
A letter purportedly from him to “All Bucktail Medical Center Staff” regarding funding to critical access hospitals has been circulating on Facebook this week. In that letter people are urged to contact state legislators and Gov. Tom Wolf in support of House Bill 1806.
HB 1806 is drafted specifically to appropriate and immediately pay Disproportionate Share
Funds to Critical Access Hospitals in Pennsylvania.
According to the letter, “it is important that we all contact our legislators and Gov. Wolf in support of HB 1806.”
Clinton County Commissioner Pete Smeltz concurs with Reeves of the importance of letting legislators know the public wishes. The funding for critical access hospitals has become “a political football.”
Noyes Township Supervisor Chris Graw and others also are urging the public to contact legislators. She and others said the community needs to “bombard Harrisburg” with phone calls, emails and letters in support of the bill to get the funds forwarded to Bucktail Medical Center and other critical access hospitals in Pennsylvania.
BMC must remain current with bills because it is in Chapter 11. Since Chap. 11 the medical center has self funded cash, much of which is from federal and state disproportionate share money. BMC still has some of that money left from last year. But projections for the next twelve months show a $340,000 short fall without the disproportionate funding.
Because the center is in bankruptcy it can’t borrow money; nobody will lend money while the center is in bankruptcy. Officials said the problem now is the state’ s failure to release the funds needed and owed to the medical center for services it has already provided. Reeves said the results of a recent vote on releasing funds for critical access hospitals showed that every Republican voted for it; every Democrat voted against it. The issue has, as Commissioner Smeltz said, become a political football.
