Buy a rural hospital for $100? Investors pick up struggling institutions
npr.org
npr.org
> To prevent this hospital's closure in 2013, Houston County bought it for $2.4 million and raised taxes locally to subsidize operations. "We had no business being in the hospital business," Mayor James Bridges said. "The majority of county governments do not have the expertise and the education and knowledge that it takes to run health care facilities in 2022."
> Local residents still have trouble stomaching the sticker price: $100 for a property valued at $1.4 million by the local tax assessor. In addition to that low price, Braden Health won tax breaks for committing to invest $2 million into the building.
> The Houston County hospital is valued at $4.1 million by the property assessor. But the final sale price was just $20,000 — and that wasn't for the land or the building. Kopec said the amount was for a 2016 ambulance with 180,000 miles — deemed the only equipment with any remaining value.
> An agreement with Braden Health to take over the shuttered hospital in Haywood County, Tennessee, valued at $4.6 million, was a similarly symbolic payment. All told, Braden Health is getting more than $10 million worth of real estate for less than the price of an appendectomy.
Excellent NPR-style anecdote:
> At the hospital in Erin, much of the facility's equipment is older than Kopec. And he said using outdated technology has caused Medicare to penalize the hospital with reduced payments.
> For instance, at a hospital in this town of 1,700 about a 90-minute drive northwest from Nashville, the X-ray machine is beyond repair.
> "This system is so old, it's been using a floppy disk," said Kopec, 23, marveling at the bendy black square that hardly has enough memory to hold a single digital photo. "I've never actually seen a floppy disk in use. I've seen them in the Smithsonian."