GREENWOOD, Miss.—Curressia Brown opened Monday’s information session with a question to the audience about Greenwood Leflore Hospital in Greenwood, Mississippi: “How many of you know how we got to the position of bankruptcy? Raise your hands,” she said.
No one did.
After the news of GLH’s bankruptcy broke, Curressia and her husband, Troy Brown, quickly organized an information session at the Andrew McQueen Jr. Civic Center on April 20 to help inform Leflore County residents about what is happening with Greenwood Leflore Hospital.
Greenwood Leflore Hospital filed for Chapter 9 bankruptcy protection on April 15, a last attempt to stay open as it negotiates with the University of Mississippi Medical Center for a potential takeover. Employees have been warned that, though leadership is optimistic, the financially distressed hospital is not guaranteed to survive and could close permanently by June 15.
The hospital has struggled for years to establish a solid financial footing after the COVID-19 pandemic drained its cash reserves as it expanded its ICU services to accommodate the surge in severely ill patients. Last year, the Mississippi Division of Medicaid began clawing back overpayments in Medicaid supplemental funding given to the hospital in 2024. If Hinds County Chancery Court had not ordered a pause in the clawbacks, the hospital would have closed in December.
Angela Grayer was direct Monday night: The community needs to be informed about what’s happening with Greenwood Leflore Hospital. The hospital’s very livelihood may depend on it.
“The community has not been actually informed,” Grayer, a nurse who has worked both full-time and part-time at GLH, told the Mississippi Free Press. “Some of that can possibly be our fault because we are not asking questions that we need to ask. I feel like tonight gave us an opportunity to learn a lot of things and to be able to be informed about a lot of things that we didn’t know.”
Grayer began her nursing career at Greenwood Leflore Hospital, making her commitment to its success personal.
The hospital “is really important,” said Rob Spiller, who has lived in Greenwood for 30 years. “The emergency room, the ICU services—the hospital used to be full. I’ve had many, many friends and customers who’ve been out there getting surgeries and all kinds of activities that they may not have survived without it. It’s essential to a prosperous community.”
Spiller, like Grayer, told the Mississippi Free Press that he feels there has been a lack of communication from local leaders.
“We don’t know what’s going on. We know they’re working behind the scenes, I think. But there’s been very little communicated about it to the general public.”
One part of Curressia Brown’s presentation included an interview that SuperTalk Mississippi held with Mississippi Senate Chairman of the Public Health and Welfare Committee Hob Bryan, D-Amory, on April 14, where Bryan discussed what is happening with GLH.
“The future of the hospital in Greenwood is in the hands of the University of Mississippi Medical Center at this point,” Bryan said in the interview.
‘A Symbolic Emphasis of Decline’
Scott Colom, the Mississippi Democratic primary candidate for U.S. Senate, highlighted the stakes for Greenwood residents on a campaign stop earlier this month.
“I was just thinking about how much this is going to impact places like Greenwood. I was walking and thinking, it’s not just people not having access to healthcare. It’s what it’s going to do to the community—the jobs, the prospects,” Colom told the Mississippi Free Press on April 16.
Colom, a district attorney from Columbus, Miss., also attributes the crisis that the hospital is in to the state’s failure to expand Medicaid and federal Medicaid funding cu under President Donald Trump. Hospital emergency rooms have to accept patients regardless of their insurance status, often swallowing the costs of unpaid care, and experts have said Medicaid expansion could help rural hospitals by covering as many as 300,000 more Mississippians.
“It goes back to us not expanding Medicaid for the last couple of years and costing ourselves billions of dollars—not only in federal money but also access to affordable healthcare,” Colom said.
Mississippi lawmakers had eyed expanding Medicaid in recent years, but gave up after Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act implemented severe cuts to Medicaid.
Colom won the Democratic Party’s nomination for U.S. Senate in the March primaries. On Nov. 7, Colom will face off against incumbent Republican U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith. In his interview with the Mississippi Free Press, he noted that Hyde-Smith voted for the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and the Medicaid cuts it entails, calling it the “big, beautiful betrayal.”
“When you don’t have hospitals, that becomes kind of a symbolic emphasis of decline. I’m really worried about it. It’s rooted in failures to focus on what’s best for the working people of Mississippi,” Colom said.
Jake Monssen, Hyde-Smith’s campaign manager, responded to Colom’s comments regarding the senator and the One Big Beautiful Bill Act with a statement from on Apr. 21.
“Scott Colom is distorting the facts in an attempt to capitalize politically on an issue he clearly does not understand. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith has made improving rural healthcare a priority since she was first elected, and she will continue to do so,” Monssen said in the statement to the Mississippi Free Press.
On Apr. 24, 2025, the federal government selected Greenwood Leflore Hospital as one of the healthcare institutions to receive aid from the Rural Community Hospital Demonstration Program. The acceptance of the hospital’s application comes as a result of a bipartisan push between Hyde-Smith, Republican U.S. Senator Roger Wicker of Mississippi and Democratic U.S. House Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi.
‘I Would Like to See the Hospital Be Saved’
Greenwood Mayor Kenderick Cox said efforts to save Greenwood Leflore Hospital are ongoing.
“The city and the county are working together doing everything that we can to keep the hospital from closing,” he said in an interview with the Mississippi Free Press on Apr. 14.
Greenwood Leflore Hospital serves Leflore County and other adjacent areas. Around 75% of the county’s population is Black. Should GLH close, the nearest hospital is 33 miles away at the UMMC campus in Grenada.
While uncertainty over the hospital’s fate lingers, community members believe that there is still hope for GLH.
“I would like to see the hospital be saved. That’s what I would like to see. And for us to be more informed about the things that are going on,” Angela Grayer said. “For the community, I want to see our community come out better and inform themselves and get knowledge about what’s going on and not speculating on things.”
