Doña Ana County is looking to hire a consultant to review the Memorial Medical Center lease as pressure on the area’s largest hospital continues to mount.
Stephen Lopez, the county’s interim manager, said during a meeting on Sept. 10 that the county wanted a consultant to review and analyze the lease.
“That should time out pretty well with the actions the City of Las Cruces took recently,” Lopez said.
In August, the city of Las Cruces said that Memorial Medical Center may have violated its lease by not providing the city with documentation required by the contract. The decision came after New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez announced an investigation into billing practices and claims the hospital was rejecting indigent cancer patients.
The recent scrutiny stems from an NBC News report that interviewed a dozen patients who had lost out on care because they couldn’t pay.
Memorial Medical Center sits on the site of the old county hospital and on land leased by the city and the county. As part of the lease, MMC is required to provide government entities with documents and treat indigent patients.
The hospital is owned and operated by LifePoint, an international for-profit corporation that has been criticized for allegedly skimping on patient care to improve profit margins.
Lopez said that Doña Ana County was requesting permission from the state to hire the consultant without having to put the request out to bid.
“So that will be a good resource to the county, and, of course, we will work with our city partners in order to be able to review what comes in and have a good technical understanding of whatever our responses are and about the lease document going forward,” Lopez said.
