The Alabama Legislature has approved a bill to create a resource center housed at the University of Alabama at Birmingham Health System to provide support for nonprofit, rural, public hospitals in the state that are facing economic pressures.
The bill, sponsored in the Senate by Sen. Greg Reed, R-Jasper, and in the House by Rep. Randall Shedd, R-Cullman, would create the Alabama Rural Hospital Resource Center, staffed and managed by the UAB Health System. It would assist rural public hospitals in areas including purchasing and supply chain, strategic planning, insurance and cost reporting, coding, recruitment, and compliance.
“I believe that increasing access to quality health care for Alabamians in rural areas is essential,” Reed said. “The physicians and researchers at UAB are among the best in the world, and this new center will give Alabama’s rural hospitals direct access to game-changing innovations in medicine and health care management.”
“This is a concept that provides benefit to all parties involved, but most of all to the residents of rural Alabama who have seen their local hospital close or be forced to cut services,” Shedd said. “This can help ensure that appropriate health care is available to all Alabamians where they live and work.”
The plan would call for the UAB Health System to add staff to provide expertise, advice and resources to hospitals that request assistance.
“As the flagship health enterprise in the state, UAB has robust systems in place in the areas where a rural hospital might have needs — areas including coding, supply chain or regulatory compliance,” said Will Ferniany, Ph.D., CEO of the UAB Health System. “We can offer our knowledge, insights, and support as a means of helping rural hospitals across the state remain viable and open.”
Ferniany acknowledged the Alabama Hospital Association for its assistance and support for the bill, and thanked Reed and Shedd, along with House and Senate leadership, for making passage a priority. The bill now goes to Gov. Kay Ivey for her signature, and the center will need approval from the University of Alabama System Board of Trustees.
“Many rural hospitals are in crisis,” Ferniany said. “The resource center is designed to help keep those nonprofit, public hospitals operational so that Alabamians can get medical care close to home when appropriate. That helps ensure that a tertiary care facility like UAB Hospital will have available resources for the situations for which we are uniquely positioned to provide care — including Level 1 trauma, transplantation, and advanced cancer care, for example.”
Ferniany says the resource center is one part of a larger effort by the UAB Health System to help stabilize small, rural hospitals and improve access to needed medical care for all residents of Alabama. That effort gained steam following a 2016 law enabling universities with medical schools to create University Health Authorities.
Hospitals that are eligible to request assistance from the center would be located in areas that meet federal designations of rural areas or have a shortage of health care resources under federal guidelines. More than 30 public hospitals in Alabama meet those criteria.
While the bill was passed, it has not been funded yet. The UAB Health System will work to determine interim funding prior to the 2019 legislative session to start providing support to eligible hospitals.
Once it is funded, another component of the center will be the creation of two rural administrative residency positions through UAB’s graduate program in health administration in the School of Health Professions to provide an incentive for graduates to consider administrative careers in rural areas.
About the UAB Health System
The UAB Health System is a $3.2 billion organization with more than 2,000 medical staff members and 17,750 employees in its hospitals, including UAB Hospital, UAB Hospital-Highlands, UAB Callahan Eye Hospital, and authority relationships at Medical West and Baptist Health Montgomery. UABHS is also committed to improving rural health care and manages Bryan W. Whitfield Memorial Hospital in Demopolis, LV Stabler Memorial Hospital in Greenville and John Paul Jones Hospital in Camden. Affiliation relationships include Infirmary Health System in Mobile, Eliza Coffee Memorial Hospital in Florence, Northeast Regional Medical Center in Anniston and Russell Medical in Alexander City. Find more information at www.uab.edu and www.uabmedicine.org.
(Courtesy University of Alabama at Birmingham)
