A Community Hospital in Deep-Red Wyoming

[turbinetree]

After significant cutbacks and tragedies at their private equity–owned hospital, the community of Riverton, Wyoming, tried something different.

BY MAUREEN TKACIK APRIL 27, 2022

A few weeks after Elaine Tillman was murdered in her Lander, Wyoming, emergency room bed by a fellow psychiatric patient, a state health inspector showed up to interview staffers of the SageWest community hospital, ostensibly about their N95 mask supplies.

“I told him I had as much as the next guy, I guess,” remembers a nurse who worked at the hospital during the Thanksgiving 2020 attack and its aftermath. Like most rural hospitals, SageWest had 99 problems more urgent than its PPE supply. A day after Tillman’s assault, a COVID outbreak had sickened enough nurses to shut down their sister hospital in Riverton, but that was more a reflection of SageWest’s shortage of humans than masks. On paper, the hospital system had 141 beds between its two outlets in Fremont County, but never enough nurses to staff more than 35 or 40. So staffers had to work sick until their PCR test results came back from the state lab.

“And then he gets a little quieter and starts asking, you know, how long it takes the police to arrive if we called, do we have enough staff to watch potentially violent patients, and um, don’t we have any security guards around here?” the nurse continued.

https://prospect.org/health/community-hospital-in-deep-red-wyoming/?utm_source=ActiveCampaign&utm_medium=email&utm_content=John+Fetterman+vs++Wall+Street+%7C+Your+Prospect+Weekend+Reads&utm_campaign=%28a%29+Weekend+Prospect+Reads+04302022+-+Non-Recurring+Reg+Readers&vgo_ee=gLQIdMAUEJu%2F94MEutwfLxwUnRnlmwiuCIJkd9A7F3A%3D

I use to live in area of that Wyoming country and it was just amazing how they want to just jump on that band wagon on conservative value roots and how it don't square with the "tax plan" of being a libertarian or put another way a conservative........but they sure as hell gave cattle ranchers and oil tax breaks....

[stopdiggin]

1. if it weren't for federal money

these places would be in even worse shape than they are now (which is to say desolate). But of course - 'socialism' makes them all quivery and weak in the knees. Another massive disconnect.

But, don't worry - the 'churches' will take up the slack.
----- --- -----

[hlthe2b]

2. If you read "What's the Matter with Kansas," it applies equally well to WY, ND, SD. (MS as well)

A sad and deranged pattern of believing whatever conservative politicos tell them even while their hospitals close, fall apart, are defunded and yes, the tax breaks go everywhere except to those really needing them. Like TX, Wyomingites think the world is their oyster because they pay no state income tax. Guess who does essentially pay it on their part, folks?

[SWBTATTReg]

3. And MO. They've been closing small community hospitals right and left in the outlying

areas of MO, so much so, that most need to go to the bigger cities now, for any decent care if needed.

[hlthe2b]

5. YES... absolutely

[kimbutgar]

4. My husband has a nephew who was a nurse practitioner in a really red part of Idaho

He finally couldn’t take it anymore because of the ignorant people and those saying he lied about them having Covid and he quit the small clinic and moved to Boise.

[mainer]

6. Thank you. Great article.

Private equity firms are destroying healthcare everywhere.

[mcar]

7. We were in that part of WY last year

for a family wedding. Riverton is technically part of the "Rez," a native reservation. It is beautiful but flat, desolate, and too far from the National Parks for people to work there.

I can imagine this happening there.