The Southern Regional Medical Center

The Southern Regional Medical Center is a nonprofit hospital with 331 beds in Riverdale at clayton county of Georgia. Southern Regional Medical Center is considered as one of the best employers in the Clayton County with over 1,550 employees and physicians. It admits nearly 74,000 patients each year and it is the only comprehensive healthcare facility in that county.  Riverdale is geographically located 12 miles south of Atlanta.

In the last two decades, Southern Regional has witnessed a dramatic socioeconomic change in the county which has driven it to a hardship point due to an increasing number of patients not affording to pay for the services they have received there. Clayton was affected the most among all the metro counties due to the recession and the housing bust. Furthermore, new competition and changes in the way medical care is distributed and paid for, has shrunken Southern Regional’s revenues. It has reported annual losses since 2007, each year. In 2014 alone, more than 30% of the hospital’s patient intake was not insured. Southern Regional Medical Center has provided $21 million in care that was not reimbursed by the insurance companies.

Southern Regional Medical Center has had a large amount of care that went unpaid. This continued for several years before the authorities decided to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in mid 2015. The hospital claims it requires funds totaling $6 million to continue its normal operation. This decision came only a week after the Prime Healthcare Foundation, a healthcare system based in California, proposed to the court of the Clayton County that it was interested in buying the hospital.  In their letter to the court, they also guaranteed that they will keep it open and fully functional for a minimum of 5 years. With some of the promises of Prime Healthcare, such as a pledged for $50 million of money to be infused into Southern Regional Medical Center, the hospital is hoped to survive the turmoil.