Jackson Hospital asks Montgomery City Council to guarantee loan to stay open
A major discussion took place at Montgomery’s City Council meeting Friday night about whether the City will provide funding support that would enable Jackson Hospital to keep it’s doors open. Representatives from Jackson Hospital stood before the nine city council members and the mayor and said there was no time to waste. They stressed that they may not be able to make payroll next week without the city providing a guarantee of a $20.5 million dollar loan. The hospital is preparing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
Montgomery’s City Hall was filled with nurses, doctors, and other employees from Jackson Hospital who are worried about their jobs, as well as the more than 250 patients they currently have staying there, the thousand patients they see in their clinics every day, and the two hundred patients they treat in the emergency room. Jackson employs 2,100 people in our area.
One local doctor said all he cares about is being able to help save lives, and he emphasized that the doctors, nurses, and patients in Montgomery should not be punished just because the hospital was run poorly during the past five years. A nurse stood up and said that the nursing programs at local colleges would suffer if Jackson closed, and it could prevent nurses from getting trained and licensed at a time when nurses are desperately needed. City council members voted unanimously for a substitute resolution and said they needed more information.
“We did not approve anything tonight that said ‘hey we’re giving up $20.5 million.’ This is an intent to negotiate to give up the $20.5 million with all the due diligence being done. What we did is authorized the mayor to look it over. So they know what we’re asking for, and we’ll get our attorneys to look at the information that’s provided, and if they say ‘ok this is a good deal’ or this is a bad deal. This is what the city needs to do whether it’s $20 million dollars, 8 million dollars, 10 million dollars,” said City Council President C.C. Calhoun.
“The guarantee that we’ve asked for can be negotiated with the bond holder’s council and the city’s council. That is well underway and has been for a while. The hope is to get that done fairly quickly so that we can continue to operate Jackson going forward. And we can get a financing package in place that the bond holders will agree to fund with the guarantee of the city,” said Allen Wilen who is the Chief Restructuring Officer at Jackson Hospital.
The resolution now goes to Mayor Steven Reed. If he approves the agreement, the city of Montgomery won’t be giving Jackson hospital cash, they’ll just be guaranteeing a loan so the hospital can basically get their ducks in a row. This will allow time to sell the hospital in order to keep it open. Jackson is one of only three hospitals in the Capitol City.
If the mayor does not approve it, the future of the hospital that has been in Montgomery for 75 years is uncertain. The mayor has ten days to approve or deny the resolution. If he does not act in ten days, the resolution automatically becomes law.
