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 situated, ranks 90th of Tennessee's 95 counties in well being outcomes and has a poverty fee almost double the nationwide common, so dropping its cornerstone of well being care had an impact. dominated all through the area.
“Oh my gosh,” stated Tawnya Brock, healthcare high quality supervisor and Jellico resident. “That hospital was not solely the lifeline of well being look after this neighborhood. Economically and socially, it was the middle of the neighborhood.”
Since 2010, 149 rural hospitals in america have closed or stopped offering inpatient care, in response to the Cecil G. Sheps Heart for Well being Providers Analysis on the College of North Carolina. Tennessee has recorded the second-highest variety of closures of any state, with 15, and essentially the most closures per capita. Texas has the very best variety of rural hospital closures, with 25.
Each time a hospital closes, there are well being and financial repercussions all through the neighborhood. When Jellico Medical Heart closed, about 300 jobs have been misplaced. Eating places and different small companies in Jellico have additionally gone out of enterprise, stated Brock, who serves on the legislative committee of the Tennessee Rural Well being Affiliation. And the city is left to cope with the empty shell of a hospital.
Dozens of small communities are debating what to do with hospitals which have closed. Sheps Heart researchers have discovered that whereas a closure negatively impacts the native financial system, these results might be softened if the constructing is transformed into one other kind of healthcare facility.
In Jellico, the town owns the constructing that housed the medical heart and Mayor Sandy Terry stated it’s in good situation. However the newest operator, Indiana-based Boa Vida Healthcare, has the license to function a medical heart there and has not but introduced its plans for the constructing, leaving Jellico in limbo. Terry stated native officers are speaking to well being care suppliers who’ve expressed curiosity in reopening the hospital. That’s his most well-liked choice. Jellico doesn't have a plan B.
“We're simply hoping that perhaps somebody will take 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 when housed Jamestown Regional Medical Heart has been vacant since June 2019, when Florida-based Rennova Well being, which additionally beforehand operated Jellico Medical Heart, , closed it.
County Govt Jimmy Johnson stated Rennova's departure from Jamestown was so abrupt that “all of the beds have been made completely” and there have been racks for IVs and wheelchairs within the hallways. 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. An area enterprise proprietor purchased it for $220,000. However Rennova was given one yr to reacquire the constructing for what he owed in again taxes, plus curiosity, and he did so in a couple of days.
Deserted hospital buildings dot the map in central and japanese Tennessee. However within the western a part of the state, two communities discovered makes use of for his or her empty buildings, though to not reopen hospitals.
Somerville, about an hour east of Memphis, misplaced its hospital, Methodist Fayette, in 2015. Its mum or dad firm, Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare, donated the constructing to the town and contributed $250,000. The constructing is now a satellite tv for pc campus of the College of Tennessee-Martin.
The conversion was pushed by the town leveraging different funding. Somerville Metropolis Supervisor Bob Turner stated each the town and county matched Methodist's quarter-million for the renovation. In its first yr in Somerville, the faculty raised one other $125,000. Tennessee's governor later matched that $875,000 in his state price range.
Somerville is now within the seventh yr of a 10-year settlement with the college, which leases the constructing from the town.
“Now we have 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 nonetheless desperately wants a hospital, however “we're thrilled we have been in a position to make lemonade out of our lemons.”
Ninety miles northeast, in rural Carroll County, Tennessee, one other shuttered hospital discovered new life.
The closure of McKenzie Regional Hospital in 2018 was a serious blow to the native financial system. However Baptist Memorial Well being Care, which operates a hospital in close by Huntingdon, bought the property (together with the constructing, land, tools and ambulance service) and subsequently donated the constructing to the town of McKenzie.
Cachengo, a know-how firm, ultimately took over the area. Due to the hospitals' electrical infrastructure, the positioning was excellent for a enterprise like theirs, stated Ash Younger, CEO of Cachengo. Younger stated Cachengo is now learning the potential of repurposing deserted hospitals throughout the nation.
Jill Holland, former McKenzie mayor and native authorities and particular initiatives coordinator for the Southwest Tennessee Growth District, believes the town can turn out to be a know-how hub.
“It's opening lots of doorways of alternative for younger folks in the neighborhood,” Holland stated.
Again in Jamestown, the empty hospital is “deteriorating,” stated Johnson, the county govt. “It might have been used to save lots of lives.” Rennova didn’t reply to a request for remark.
The College of Tennessee Medical Heart opened a free-standing emergency room in one other a part of Jamestown, saving residents a half-hour drive to the closest emergency room. Johnson believes the previous hospital constructing might serve the neighborhood as housing for the homeless or as a substance use dysfunction remedy heart.
Brock, the healthcare high quality supervisor, believes issues will get higher in Jellico, however the neighborhood's hopes have been dashed greater than as soon as.
Brock believes a freestanding emergency room might be a viable answer. She urges her neighborhood to reply to “a brand new day” in rural American well being, one wherein a hospital should give attention to essentially the most urgent wants of its neighborhood and be practical about what that hospital can provide.
“Perhaps it's simply the emergency room, a sustainable emergency room, the place you possibly can maintain sufferers for a time period after which switch them,” Brock stated. “And then you definitely construct on that.”
He added: “There are alternatives.”