When it comes to hospitals, bigger is better

Telephone booths and drive-in movie theatres have vanished across the American landscape.  So have small community hospitals.  The Oconee hospital medical staff and this year’s Leadership Oconee class are among groups who received presentations in the last week that touched on disappearing small hospitals.  The presenter, Hunter Kome, President of the GHS Oconee Medical Campus, makes the case when it comes to keeping a small hospital thriving it pays to get bigger.  And that was an important consideration for Oconee Memorial in 2014 to switch from an independently-operated hospital to GHS, a regional care provider.  Kome made the point to the local medical staff Monday that many of the hospitals that closed in the Southeast are those in states that chose not to expand Medicaid, the government’s social health care program for those with limited income.  Kome’s recent research shows the number of South Carolina community hospitals remaining at 10 or 11.