Closing of Rural Hospitals Leaves Cities With Unhealthy Actual Property

By Taylor Sisk

JELLICO, Tenn. — In March 2021, this city of about 2,000 residents within the hills of east Tennessee misplaced its hospital, a 54-bed acute care facility. Campbell County, the place Jellico is positioned, ranks ninetieth of Tennessee’s 95 counties in well being outcomes and has a poverty price nearly double the nationwide common, so dropping its well being care cornerstone despatched ripple results by way of the area.

“Oh, my phrase,” stated Tawnya Brock, a well being care high quality supervisor and a Jellico resident. “That hospital was not solely the well being care lifeline to this neighborhood. Economically and socially, it was the middle of the neighborhood.”

Since 2010, 149 rural hospitals in the USA have both closed or stopped offering in-patient care, based on the Cecil G. Sheps Middle for Well being Companies Analysis on the College of North Carolina. Tennessee has recorded the second-most closures of any state, with 15, and probably the most closures per capita. Texas has the best variety of rural hospital closures, with 25.

Every time a hospital closes there are well being care and financial ripples throughout a neighborhood. When Jellico Medical Middle closed, some 300 jobs went with it. Eating places and different small companies in Jellico even have gone below, stated Brock, who’s a member of the Rural Well being Affiliation of Tennessee’s legislative committee. And the city should take care of the empty husk of a hospital.

Dozens of small communities are grappling with what to do with hospitals which have closed. Sheps Middle researchers have discovered that whereas a closure negatively impacts the native economic system, these results will be softened if the constructing is transformed to a different sort of well being care facility.

In Jellico, the city owns the constructing that housed the medical heart, and Mayor Sandy Terry stated it’s in first rate situation. However the final operator, Indiana-based Boa Vida Healthcare, holds the license to function a medical facility there and has but to announce its plans for the constructing, leaving Jellico in limbo. Terry stated native officers are speaking with well being care suppliers which have expressed curiosity in reopening the hospital. That’s their most popular choice. Jellico doesn’t have a Plan B.

“We’re simply in hopes that perhaps somebody will take it over,” Terry stated. In the meantime, the closest emergency rooms are a half-hour drive away in LaFollette, Tennessee, and throughout the state line in Corbin, Kentucky.

An hour and a half away in Fentress County, the constructing that after housed Jamestown Regional Medical Middle has been empty since June 2019, when Florida-based Rennova Well being — which additionally beforehand operated Jellico Medical Middle — locked it up.

County Govt Jimmy Johnson stated Rennova’s exit from Jamestown was so abrupt that “the beds have been all made up completely” and IV stands and wheelchairs sat within the halls. About 150 jobs evaporated when the middle closed.

Rennova nonetheless owed Fentress County $207,000 in taxes, Johnson stated, and in April the property was put up for public sale. A neighborhood enterprise proprietor bought it for $220,000. However Rennova was granted a 12 months to reacquire the constructing for what it owed in again taxes, plus curiosity, and did so inside a couple of days.

Deserted hospital buildings dot the map in central and east Tennessee. However within the western a part of the state, two communities discovered makes use of for his or her empty buildings, albeit not in reopening hospitals.

Somerville, about an hour east of Memphis, misplaced its hospital, Methodist Fayette, in 2015. Its mother or father firm, Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare, donated the constructing to the city and threw in $250,000. The constructing is now a satellite tv for pc campus for the College of Tennessee-Martin.

The conversion was pushed alongside by the city leveraging different funding. Bob Turner, Somerville’s metropolis administrator, stated each the city and the county matched Methodist’s quarter-million {dollars} towards the renovation. In its first 12 months in Somerville, the college raised one other $125,000. Tennessee’s governor then matched that $875,000 in his state price range.

Somerville is now within the seventh 12 months of a 10-year settlement with the college, which rents the constructing from the city.

“We have now a constructing, an asset, that’s most likely value $15 million,” Turner stated. “It’s a four-year college proper right here within the coronary heart of Fayette County.”

Mendi Donnelly, Somerville’s neighborhood growth director, stated the county continues to be in determined want of a hospital, however “we’re thrilled that we have been capable of make lemonade out of our lemons.”

Ninety miles to the northeast, in rural Carroll County, Tennessee, one other shuttered hospital discovered new life.

The closing of McKenzie Regional Hospital in 2018 was a blow to the native economic system. However Baptist Memorial Well being Care, which operates a hospital in close by Huntingdon, purchased the belongings — together with the constructing, land, gear, and ambulance service — and subsequently donated the constructing to the city of McKenzie.

Cachengo, a expertise firm, in the end took over the house. Due to hospitals’ electrical infrastructure, the positioning was an ideal match for a enterprise like his, stated Ash Younger, Cachengo’s chief government. Younger stated Cachengo is now wanting into repurposing deserted hospitals throughout the nation.

Jill Holland, McKenzie’s former mayor and a local-government and special-projects coordinator for the Southwest Tennessee Improvement District, believes the city can turn out to be a expertise hub.

“It’s opening quite a lot of doorways of alternative for the youth in the neighborhood,” Holland stated.

Again in Jamestown, the vacant hospital is “deteriorating,” stated Johnson, the county government. “It might have been used to save lots of lives.” Rennova didn’t reply to a request for remark.

The College of Tennessee Medical Middle opened a freestanding emergency room elsewhere in Jamestown, sparing residents a half-hour drive to the closest ER. Johnson believes the outdated hospital constructing might serve the neighborhood as housing for many who are homeless or as a facility to deal with substance use dysfunction.

Brock, the well being care high quality supervisor, thinks issues will get higher in Jellico, however the neighborhood has had its hopes dashed greater than as soon as.

Brock believes a freestanding emergency room may very well be a viable answer. She urges her neighborhood to be conscious of “a brand new day” in rural well being in America, one during which a hospital should deal with its neighborhood’s most pressing wants and be reasonable about what that hospital can present.

“Possibly it’s simply the emergency room, a sustainable emergency room, the place you would maintain sufferers for a time period after which switch them,” Brock stated. “And then you definately construct upon that.”

She added, “There are alternatives on the market.”

KFF Well being Information is a nationwide newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about well being points and is likely one of the core working applications at KFF—an impartial supply of well being coverage analysis, polling, and journalism. Be taught extra about KFF.

Subscribe to KFF Well being Information’ free Morning Briefing.

—

Beforehand Revealed on kffhealthnews.org

***

—

Photograph credit score: unsplash