Unity Health Jacksonville, the only hospital in the city, closed its emergency room and medical-surgical unit on Wednesday and will become a psychiatric hospital, and Democrats are blaming Republicans for it. 

The move comes only three years after the $36 million hospital opened, providing a 13-bed emergency department and a 24-bed behavioral health unit. A financial report the hospital filed early last year said the facility lost almost $10 million in 2024.

Last week’s announcement of the closures was followed Wednesday when Democrats sent out a blistering press release blaming Republicans for the hospital’s actions that officials said were due to the current “healthcare climate,” according to the release. 

Rep. Mark Perry (D-Jacksonville), who serves on the hospital’s advisory council, said Medicaid charges weren’t being reimbursed to the hospital because of simple and correctible problems.

Perry works in insurance and said he has seen people who have lost Medicaid due to changing addresses or a phone numbers and not notifying the Arkansas Department of Human Services.

“They don’t know they lost coverage until they go to the doctor and their card doesn’t work, which in turn, when that happens, they usually go to the ER, because the ER has to treat you,” Perry said. “But unfortunately, it turns into uncompensated care, because an ER doesn’t have a way to bill anyone and they can’t refuse treatment.”

Perry said that hospitals that treat patients and are not compensated for the snafu.

Allison Grigsby Sweatman, a clinical social worker who is running as a Democrat for state Senate District 13, which covers parts of North Little Rock, Sherwood, Jacksonville and Maumelle, said Republicans in the state legislature are at fault for many of the problems facing hospitals.

“The hospital closing is a direct result of the [state] budget prioritizing tax cuts for the wealthiest Arkansans over health care for the people who need it the most,” Sweatman said.

“I see patients struggle with the cost of healthcare every day in my practice, and I’m sick and tired of watching my patients and my neighbors suffer because Republicans would rather fund tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires than healthcare.” 

Andrew Cade Eberly, candidate for state House District 67, which includes Jacksonville and Sherwood, said that “when emergency care isn’t close to home, more people die.

“It should be obvious that when we rip healthcare coverage away from people, Arkansans either won’t go to the doctor when they get sick, or when they do go, they will be forced to seek expensive emergency care,” Eberly said. “When uninsured people rack up unbelievably high medical bills that they will never be able to pay, our hospitals will close.”

Medicaid reimbursements in Arkansas are much lower than they are in surrounding states, but legislators have in the past claimed that there’s not enough money to increase the reimbursement rates. The federal government pays three-fourths of Medicaid reimbursements while the state picks up the other quarter. 

Furthermore, Gov. Sarah Sanders has made it clear that she is opposed to extending Medicaid coverage for another year for mothers who just gave birth, making Arkansas the only state in the country that doesn’t allow new mothers to keep Medicaid coverage for a full year after giving birth.

In her state of the state address at the start of this year’s fiscal session, Sanders encouraged lawmakers to not create new Medicaid coverage mandates, while floating the possibility of income tax cuts if spending was contained.

Additionally, Arkansas will launch a work requirement for some Medicaid recipients starting in earnest in January, as part of the federal “Big Beautiful Bill” signed by President Donald Trump. It has been shown, however, that work requirements do little more than kick people out of the program. 

All of these problems spell trouble for hospitals. In a recent interview with the Arkansas Times, Rep. Jeff Wardlaw (R-Hermitage) said 25 to 30 hospitals in the state are at risk of disappearing in the next decade, due to a variety of factors, including low insurance reimbursements. “The domino effect has already started,” he said. 

Unity Health in Jacksonville bought the old North Metro Medical Center building after that hospital closed.

Sweatman said the public will suffer because they won’t have an emergency room nearby.

“As anyone in health care or not knows, minutes matter when it comes to emergency health care,” Sweatman said. “So rushing someone to the hospital in a moment of need will now take longer for the residents of Jacksonville.”

Sweatman said she worries that other hospitals in Arkansas will go the same direction as Unity Health-Jacksonville if state politicians continue to neglect Medicaid.

“Cuts and restrictions to health care for families is something that impacts people all over the state, and Jacksonville is one small city in the state of Arkansas that is feeling this impact in a big way because of the closing of a hospital,” she said. “But Jacksonville is one of many that are feeling … these restrictions being placed on Medicaid, and so the solution is for our lawmakers to stop playing politics with the health care of the people who elected them.”