Tonopah closes hospital
The only hospital serving residents within a 100-mile radius in rural Nevada has closed its doors.
Following years of financial trouble, the Nye Regional Medical Center, better known as the Tonopah Hospital, closed its doors permanently on August 21. The closure includes the emergency room, laboratory, radiology, outpatient and respiratory therapies and 10 beds.
The hospital was the only healthcare facility in town; there are no clinics and only a few physicians to serve a town of roughly 2,500. Tonopah is a mining town near the junction of highways 6 and 95, about 80 miles east of Benton. County-run clinics in nearby Beatty and Armagosa also took financial hits at the start of the budget cycle, July 1.
Wayne Allen hospital CEO said in a letter Wednesday, “It’s tragic.”
Emergency medical response, like ambulances will now be transferred to Northern Inyo Hospital in Bishop or nearby Nevada hospitals in Hawthorne, Battle Mountain or Fallon, all more than 100 miles away.
According to a press release from Nye County, its Emergency Management Team has made arrangements with nearby counties to meet Nye County ambulances halfway. To maintain some response time that may be helpful in an emergency, the Life Guard Air Ambulance has brought in a second bird to assist. Nye will be meeting ambulances from Battle Mountain, Banner-Churchill, Esmeralda, Goldfield, Beatty, Bishop, and Hawthorne halfway to get patients help as soon as possible.
“Nye County is actively looking for alternatives for mutual aid ambulance crews,” a press release from Nye County Health and Human Services states.
The closure is a shock, but has been a long time coming. Allen, stated in a letter, “The hospital operations cannot be sustained any longer with expenses greater than revenues.”
The Pahrump Valley Times has been following the hospital’s downfall for years. According to the PV Times, the hospital’s parent company, Primecare Nevada closed two other rural facilities, Beatty and Round Mountain in 2012 due to delayed federal reimbursements and other financial trouble. Primecare then filed for bankruptcy in 2013.
The county loaned the hospital $2 million in 2014 to try and keep it open following the removal of hospital CEO Dr. Vincent Scoccia by a bankruptcy judge. Scoccia was accused of mismanaging the hospital and having his own accounts paid for while other doctors and bills went unpaid. The PV Times reported the hospital seemed to be emerging from bankruptcy in December 2014.
