Before Norman Price was a hospital administrator, before he went to graduate school at Texas A&M or college at Auburn, he was a boy growing up in Sylacauga, Ala.
A boy with relatives and friends whose families distilled some “’shine” in the Appalachian foothills of the Heart of Dixie.
A boy who didn’t know anything about moonshining until he and a friend shot up some barrels in the woods near a creek, then told his grandfather about his day’s adventures.
His grandfather asked his uncle to find out who owned those barrels so he could “make it right,” and, told its location, his uncle said, “Don’t worry about it. That’s my son’s still.”
So Price survived that youthful escapade to make it to retirement from his position as chief executive officer of Southwest Mississippi Regional Medical Center and tell that tale to the McComb Lions Club last week.
“At 67, it’s time to retire,” Price said. “Most of the men in my family only made it to 72, but they lived hard lives.”
Price encountered his own difficulties while advocating for the hospital and trying to expand its array of services, but he credited others for many of the advances he was able to put in place.
One of the biggest ordeals Price undertook in his tenure was establishing the Cardiovascular Institute of Mississippi, for which he and other hospital officials drew opposition from North Mississippi Medical Center and its supporters in Tupelo.
“We had to fight Tupelo,” Price said. “They were afraid that if McComb got a heart center, Columbus would get one, and that would be competition for them.”
Price said King’s Daughters Medical Center and Brookhaven officials also opposed McComb’s efforts, but “we prevailed by being persistent.”
When the hospital sought to establish its cancer center, due to cancer incidence rates in the area, there was no fight over the effort, he said.
Through the years, however, he said, “the biggest problem we had in Jackson was that everybody believed Southwest Mississippi was not in Mississippi. That’s our problem, and it always has been.”
He said the hospital and the region broke through on the heart center because then-Rep. Clem Nettles threatened to eliminate state health officer Dr. Ed Thompson’s funding if he didn’t get a satisfactory answer on why the region shouldn’t offer heart health services.
Though Price has retired as the hospital’s CEO, he continues to work part time with St. Luke Home Health and Hospice, which covers 16 counties across the southern part of the state.
Home health and hospice services “are the next big growth area in health care, until the government shuts it down,” Price said. “I’m sure the government is trying to shut down hospitals.”
He said capitation, or limits on reimbursements from the Medicare and Medicaid programs, are cutting into operating margins, while there are no limits on what drug companies or medical equipment suppliers can charge for their products.
“Hospitals are paid a set amount based on the diagnosis,” Price said. “The government doesn’t care what it costs to treat the patient. But there’s no capitation on drugs or medical equipment. If your margins are eaten up by supplies, you’re going to fail ... You can’t cut one end and let the rest go full blast.
“A hospital only needs a 1% percent margin. We’d be fine with that.”
