After 45 years of providing health care in rural western Missouri, Sac-Osage Hospital is being sold piece by piece.Ceiling tiles are going for 25 cents, the room doors for an average of less than $4 each, the patient beds for $250 apiece. Soon, the remnants of the hospital that long symbolized the lifeblood of Osceola, population 923, will be torn to the ground.
Sac-Osage is one of a growing number of rural U.S. hospitals closing their doors, citing a complex combination of changing demographics, medical practices, management decisions and federal policies that have put more financial pressure on facilities that sometimes average only a few in-patients a day.
"Money just kept drying up," said Chris Smiley, a former operating room nurse who was the last chief executive of Sac-Osage and is now overseeing its liquidation. ...