James_March-April_2026_web - Flipbook - Page 39
ike almost everything, the outlook
for healthcare in
Georgia for 2026
centers on money.
For rural hospitals in
particular, state funding decisions
can mean the difference between
life and death, not just for patients
but for the hospitals themselves
and even for the towns where they
are located.
Urban hospitals attract the
majority of the privately insured
patients in the state, leaving rural
hospitals with indigent or Medicaid
recipients with low to no reimbursements for hospitals.
But without a hospital, a town will
struggle to attract new industry
and may not be able to keep the
businesses it has.
Federal legislation known as
“The Big Beautiful Bill” appropriated $50 billion for rural health care
nationally, with Georgia’s share
more than $218 million, says Monty
Veazey with the Georgia Alliance
of Community Hospitals. “To say
it’s enough is wrong,” says Veazey.
“It will help. No doubt about it. But
it is not enough.”
A DIRE SITUATION
Exactly how and where the
money from the Rural Health Transformation fund is allocated by the
state is also crucial. At least a dozen
rural hospitals in Georgia are on the
verge of going under, Veazey says.
In Ocilla, the city disconnected
the water at Irwin County Hospital
because it had not paid a $20,000
bill. A citizen reported that she saw
one person in the emergency room,
but no water.
“That’s how dire it is out there
with some of these rural hospitals,”
Veazey says. “They just don’t have
the money to sustain what they are
attempting to do.”
Hospitals lose 20 cents on the
dollar for every Medicaid patient
and 100 percent for each indigent
patient. Medicare and private insurance can make up for those losses,
but there are too few of them in the
rural areas to reach a break even
point. For a large pool of private
insured patients, you need a big
employer in town and most don’t
have them.
“When a kid graduates from
high school and goes off to college,
they never come back because
there are no jobs there,” Veazey
notes. “You’ve got a declining population and you have a higher share
of Medicaid and indigent patients.
That’s what they’re faced with. It’s
extremely difficult.”
But with no hospital, it would
be even worse.In order to have
any chance at all in the recruiting
industry, you have to have a viable
hospital. There is a story of one
town which lost its hospital, then,
in a sad chain reaction of interde-
pendancy, also lost its pharmacy
and then its bank.
FEDERAL FUNDS
Federal funding in the Rural
Health Transformation fund has
“huge potential” to help healthcare
in Georgia’s smaller towns and
counties, says CEO Caylee Noggle
of the Georgia Hospital Association.
There are limits, however, on how
the funds can be used. It can’t supplant existing funding or be used to
construct buildings. “It really can’t
be used for ongoing or unsustainable operating costs, like permanent
staff positions or new programs that
don’t have an identified funding
source beyond these funds,” Noggle
said. “They are time limited.” But
the money could likely be used for
technology upgrades, electronic
health-record improvements and aspects of telehealth services. It could
also be used for mobile clinics and
school-based services.
“It’s really designed to be kind of
a slingshot to bring rural healthcare
forward, but not an ongoing handout,” Noggle further says. “Used
correctly, it can kind of start to kind
of chip away at the underlying root
challenges of rural healthcare.”
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