Gulf Coast Medical Center (Wharton) closes doors

[TexasTowelie]

--no link provided since the story has not hit news media--

The Gulf Coast Medical Center in Wharton, Texas closed its doors on Tuesday evening, November 15. The hospital has had financial difficulties and eliminated ICU and surgical services during the spring so it was only performing ER services. The nearest medical centers for treatment within the area are:

El Campo Memorial Hospital-El Campo (west)
OakBend Medical Center-Richmond (east)
Matagorda General Hospital-Bay City (south)
Rice Medical Center-Eagle Lake (north)

The hospital was behind on payments to vendors and on payroll to employees. I do not have any information as to whether bankruptcy has been filed. There has been some mention that OakBend is interested in providing medical services to the Wharton area if GCMC declares bankruptcy. However, the hospital also has numerous code violations that will need to be remedied if it will ever reopen.

GCMC continues in the tradition of troubled assets run by CEO Paul R. Tuft of Paradise Valley, Arizona. Tuft was CEO of hospitals in Chicago, Washington D.C., California and Ohio. Some of Tuft's acquisitions relied on financing from National Century Financial Enterprises. National Century crumbled amid a complex $2.9 billion fraud that resulted in convictions of its top six executives, including a 30-year sentence for Lance Poulsen, the chairman who had held a minority ownership stake in Envision's predecessor, Doctors Community. Tuft has been a defendant in litigation regarding allegations of financial impropriety and fiduciary irresponsibility since the 1990s.

[flamin lib]

1. Good.

They should burn the place to the ground and sow the soil with salt so nothing will ever grow there again.

[TexasTowelie]

2. Do you know someone that works there?

I have a member of my family that screwed over and is owed several thousand dollars in pay. The town needs a hospital, but the hospital was very poorly run and they will have to spend a lot of money to reopen the building as a hospital. They also closed the cancer treatment center so there will be a lot of people that will have to make alternative arrangements.

[flamin lib]

5. I'm sorry to hear about your family. My family, on the other hand, got screwed over

to the point of death. Poor treatment and incompetence.

A doctor with enough food stains on his tie to qualify as a buffet told my wife and sister in law that they "should just get over it" when their father died and two days later their mother went in for emergency bowel surgery. FIL's near last words haunt me today,"Please get me out of here . . ."

That mother fucker and I were both lucky that day. He didn't suffer a broken jaw and I didn't go to jail.

My sister worked there as an xray tech. To the day she died she agreed with me. The place should be burned to the ground and the earth sown with salt.

[Ilsa]

3. A rural hospital in a poor area

doesn't stand much of a chance of surviving unless the state expands Medicaid. Not happening in Tx.

[TexasTowelie]

4. Quite true.

All of the indigent care patients in Wharton County will be diverted to El Campo Memorial Hospital because of the closure. For people that might spend three hours riding the bus to get to a medical appointment the wait expands to possibly five or six hours.

They are also grumbling at El Campo Memorial because they were providing all the lab work for GCMC when it cut the staff during the spring and I suspect that GCMC did not pay the bills owed to Memorial. The owner of the hospital deserves to be in jail for all of the damage he has done not only at GCMC, but all of the other hospitals that he was involved with throughout the country. He was running a Ponzi scheme sucking money from one hospital after another and paying excessive compensation to himself, his family and a group of cohorts while living a posh lifestyle including flying on a private jet. Meanwhile he was donating money that should have been used to pay vendor bills and payroll to a children's charity in Arizona so that his family would gain a positive reputation for their philanthropy.