The announcement earlier this year that Mercy Hospital in Fort Scott would close by the end of the year was a surprise and shock to the community, which will lose several hundred jobs and more than a century of community health care legacy.
But it was not necessarily unexpected to those in the industry.
Many hospitals across Kansas, as around the country, have struggled the past decade with declining patient numbers amid rising costs.
According to the Kansas Hospital Association, of the state’s 127 hospitals spread across 91 counties, more than two-thirds had negative operating margins in a recent national study.
By John Green, GateHouse Kansas
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