Uninsured Crisis May Force Texas Hospital to Close its Doors

The uninsured patient crisis may soon claim a health care provider victim: a rural Texas hospital.

According to local news reports, Liberty-Dayton Community Hospital may close its doors within with a month unless it can find a buyer.

In the meantime, the City of Liberty has taken control of the hospital’s accounts receivable as payment for electric bills the hospital is currently behind on, according to Bruce Stratton, board president of the Liberty County Hospital District, a group trying to buy the hospital from current owner Frontier Health Care Group.

“The city got all the unencumbered equipment and the accounts receivables,” Stratton told the Cleveland (Texas) Advocate.

Frontier, of Fort Worth, Texas, manages the hospital. Frontier told local news outlets this week that the hospital is having a hard time paying its bills and may close within 30 days, unless if finds a buyer.

In May, the 25-bed hospital 40 miles northeast of Houston was in jeopardy of having its electricity turned off because of a $230,000 debt to the city. But prospective co-owner, Blackhawk Healthcare of Austin, made an eleventh hour payment to keep the hospital’s utilities on, hoping to gain more control of the hospitals’ operations and billing.

Blackhawk, which owns and operates rural healthcare facilities in Texas and Oklahoma, originally had agreed to buy a 51 percent stake in the beleaguered hospital and take control of unencumbered equipment, account receivables and the hospital’s tax ID, according to a report in the Advocate. For the most recent transaction -- guaranteeing payment for the utilities -- Blackhawk also sought to gain control of the hospital’s license and Medicare and Medicaid numbers. When the companies couldn’t agree on a new deal, Blackhawk walked away, Stratton said.

Stratton told the Advocate that Blackhawk is still interested in buying the hospital, but noted that the previous deals that were discussed “just [are] not on the table.”

To keep the lights on, “The city got all the unencumbered equipment and the accounts receivables,” Stratton said.