![]() ![]() The federal aid that Congress appropriated during the COVID-19 pandemic seemed to slow the rate of closures, with just 10 hospitals closed or converted between 20. Sheps Center for Health Services Research. In 2020, a record 18 were either closed or converted to outpatient facilities, according to the University of North Carolina’s Cecil G. “Without the hospital being there that night, I think the death toll and suffering would have been much worse than what it was,” hospital administrator Jerry Keever said.īut rural hospitals like Sharkey-Issaquena are increasingly endangered, as poverty, declining populations and dwindling inpatient revenue chip away at profits. In all, 26 people died in the storms, including one of Sharkey-Issaquena’s employees. Staff tended patients despite rain coming through the ceiling, working by flashlight when the generator went out.Ībout an hour passed before any patients reached the hospital. The EF4 tornado, one of several that swept through Mississippi and Alabama that night, damaged the hospital’s emergency room and took two of its three ambulances offline. ![]() “When you rolled the windows down,” she said, “you could hear people hollering.” Brown and her family, confused by the destruction and emergency lights, nearly got lost in the four blocks between their car and the hospital. Storm chasers and high school students dressed for prom were digging out victims. But after a monster tornado leveled the Mississippi Delta town of Rolling Fork and damaged Sharkey-Issaquena Community Hospital, where she is a registered nurse, she and her family rushed to help. DeeAnn Brown was not scheduled to work the evening of Friday, March 24.
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