Indian Country Emergency Rooms Face Imminent Shutdown

Add Rapid City’s Sioux San Hospital to the list of Indian Health Service (IHS) hospitals threatened by the federal government with imminent closure and or critical loss of funding. In a recent surprise inspection, a team from the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMMS) found what they call serious deficiencies in the hospital, particularly in the emergency room.

This brings to four the number of emergency rooms in the IHS’s Great Plains Region threatened with closure in the last year. The three other hospitals, Omaha Winnebago Hospital in Winnebago, Nebraska, Rosebud Hospital in Rosebud, South Dakota and Pine Ridge Hospital in Pine Ridge, South Dakota have all been placed under private management. A May 17 IHS press release states “we are using short-term funding to provide health care in these hospital emergency rooms while IHS reviews the administrative and clinical operations of its facilities across the region…”

Read more at http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2016/06/01/indian-country-emergency-rooms-face-imminent-shutdown-164661