The tax was rejected, and Bowie Memorial Hospital closed in November 2015 for the first time!
Attempts to talk about this story with members of the anti-tax order have declined. One person who refused to speak on the record said that the order was an unfair tax which opposed the county. This person hopes that the problem can be solved. directorys
In 2017, the Hashmi Group, a family medical group in the Dallas-Fort area, acquired the hospital. Two other hospitals — one in Grand Saline and the other in Grand Prairie — were owned and operated by the group.
The Texas General Hospital in Grand Prairie was one of 50 hospitals that investigators found would charge an average of more than 10 times the Medicare costs in a countrywide study by Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. The Texas General Hospital was 11th nationally and Texas was the highest.
The Grand Prairie Hospital closed in 2018 and for the second time in February 2020, the Bowie Memorial Hospital closed right before the coronavirus, and again because of financial difficulties. The following April, Bowie Real Estate Holdings, which owned the Faraz Hashmi hospital, submitted for bankruptcy. In May, although the hospital was closed for months, the hospital was granted a payment protection program loan.
“He’s not going to make it…”
Ramonna’s husband survived a “widowmaker” narrowly in an emergency room, a type of heart attack with a very low survival rate.
His blood pressure increased to 258/197 and the altitude required doctors to get it lowered to fly to a cardiac specialist in Decatur’s Wise Health System Hospital, around 27 miles away. They managed to lower it, but before they took off, doctors told Ramonna that he would not do it.
When doctors arrived in Decatur, Randy was rapidly examined and surgery determined. But they didn’t expect the operation to survive. “He said, ‘You’ve got an hour to get your things in order,’” recalled Ramonna.
She went to her husband’s room to spend the last moments together she thought. “We did not talk or talk about one thing, because how do you look at someone on your face and say ‘Your physician just said you had an hour to live?’”
Ramonna said it’s a miracle he survived not only the flight, but also the operation in Decatur.
His doctor warned Randy that in 10 years’ time, Ramonna probably will have another heart attack — a schedule that Bowie is without the hospital every day. Ramonna lives in fear because then Randy hadn’t 30 minutes to get to the hospital, and if it happens again she won’t have time.
“My husband and I decided we won’t retire here if we don’t open a hospital or an ER,” Ramonna said. “Who wants to retire in a city without medical facilities?”
Before she added, Ramonna paused to clear her throat, “It makes me cry today to think about it, if it happens to him again. I pray that he never has another one every day, but if he does, he won’t.”