Beaufort Memorial outlines workforce and Medicaid pressures, seeks roughly $1.1M from county for ER and psychiatric services

Russell Baxley, CEO of Beaufort Memorial Hospital, told the committee the hospital is the largest between Savannah and Charleston and is seeing growing volumes (about 45,000 emergency-department visits and more than 9,000 admissions last year). He said margins are pressured because patient operating revenue trails operating expense and recent federal and state payment changes (including potential Medicaid reductions and physician-payment cuts) make specialist coverage increasingly costly. "We lose money on every patient," Baxley said when describing the hospital's operating margins.

Baxley asked the county to consider approximately $1.1 million to help underwrite emergency and psychiatric coverage and to support call stipends for specialty coverage, especially given Medicaid and exchange-subsidy uncertainty that could increase charity care burdens. He emphasized workforce programs the hospital and county have partnered on — PATH training and collaborations with USCB — and described planned expansions (a Bluffton community hospital and urgent-care/ED hybrid on an island) tied to county support and project timing. Committee members acknowledged the hospital's workforce efforts and asked for follow-up documentation to evaluate the subsidy request as part of the county budget process.