The recent closing of the emergency room at Trace Regional Hospital in Houston is having an impact on Calhoun Health Services (CHS) in Calhoun City.
“We’re now the closest (emergency room) for people in the city of Houston,” Calhoun Health Services Director James Franklin said.
He confirmed they are now seeing an increase in emergency room patients from eastern Calhoun and Chickasaw County since the closing, but nothing too substantial thus far.
“I’ve been involved in emergency room closings early in my career and am familiar with the side effects,” Franklin said. “Where it really puts the pressure on is the doctors in the
James Franklin
community that are practicing that have nowhere for their patients to go at night. They don’t want to be on call for their patients. They need an ER. It will help somewhat that Houston is running a rural health clinic until 9 p.m. That cuts it down a little bit, but after 9 p.m. until the morning people will need a place to go.”
In other hospital news, Franklin said CHS will be closing its behavioral health services effective Oct. 1.
“We had 10 beds designated behavioral health beds and we’re going to reconvert those beds to regular hospital beds,” Franklin said. “As a critical care hospital, I can have 25 beds and I only have 17 now.”
Franklin said the change is a result of changes in federal guidelines.
“As a county, we had approximately 50 behavioral health patients last year,” he said. “We’ll send all those to Tupelo now. I couldn’t function as a small unit. It will be the larger units that will take care of those type people in the future.”
The closing of the behavioral health beds eliminated approximately five local jobs, Franklin said. Three of those employees opted to retire, and the other two were looking at jobs elsewhere.
“A lot of the aides went to the nursing home because we had openings there,” he said. “So there wasn’t a great economic impact for us.”
Franklin said the hospital is still awaiting word from the county on the final paperwork for the proposed $2 million expansion that will provide a new headquarters for the ambulance service, a larger physical therapy unit and office space for hospital administration.
“We should be hearing something from USDA very soon. Then we’ll start advertising for bids,” Franklin said.