Rural hospital closures leave cities with unsanitary real estate

By Taylor Sisk

JELLICO, Tenn. — In March 2021, this town of about 2,000 in the hills of eastern Tennessee lost its hospital, a 54-bed acute care facility. Campbell County, where Jellico is located, ranks 90th out of 95 Tennessee counties in health outcomes and has a poverty rate nearly twice the national average. So the loss of its health care pillar had ripple effects across the region.

“Oh my God,” said Tawnya Brock, a health care quality manager and Jellico resident. “This hospital was not only the lifeline of health care for this community. Economically and socially, it was the center of the community.”

Since 2010, 149 rural hospitals in the United States have closed or stopped providing inpatient care, according to the Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research at the University of North Carolina. Tennessee had the second-highest number of closures of any state, with 15, and the highest number of closures per capita. Texas had the most rural hospital closures, with 25.

Every hospital closure takes a toll on the community’s health and economy. When Jellico Medical Center closed, some 300 jobs disappeared. Restaurants and other small businesses in Jellico also went bankrupt, said Brock, who serves on the Tennessee Rural Health Association’s legislative committee. And the town is left to deal with the empty shell of a hospital.

Dozens of small communities are wondering what to do with hospitals that have closed. Sheps Center researchers have found that while a closure negatively affects the local economy, those effects can be mitigated if the building is converted into another type of health care facility.

In Jellico, the city owns the building that housed the medical center, and Mayor Sandy Terry said it is in good condition. But the last operator, Indiana-based Boa Vida Healthcare, holds the license to operate a medical facility on site and has not yet announced its plans for the building, leaving Jellico in limbo. Terry said local officials are talking to health care providers who have expressed interest in reopening the hospital. That is their preferred option. Jellico has no Plan B.

“We’re just hoping someone will step up,” Terry said. The nearest emergency services are a half-hour drive away in LaFollette, Tenn., and Corbin, Ky., across the border.

An hour and a half away in Fentress County, the building that once housed Jamestown Regional Medical Center has been empty since June 2019, when Florida-based Rennova Health, which also previously operated Jellico Medical Center, closed it.

Jimmy Johnson, the county’s executive director, said Rennova’s departure from Jamestown was so abrupt that “the beds were all perfectly made” and IV stands and wheelchairs were lined the hallways. About 150 jobs were lost when the center closed.

Rennova still owed $207,000 in taxes to Fentress County, Johnson said, and in April the property went up for auction. A local business owner bought it for $220,000. But Rennova was given a year to buy back the building for what it owed in back taxes, plus interest, and it did so within days.

Abandoned hospitals dot the map of central and eastern Tennessee. But in the western part of the state, two communities have found a use for their empty buildings, just not in reopening hospitals.

Somerville, about an hour east of Memphis, lost its hospital, Methodist Fayette, in 2015. Its parent company, Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare, donated the building to the city and paid $250,000. The building is now a satellite campus of the University of Tennessee-Martin.

The conversion was encouraged by the city leveraging other funds. Bob Turner, Somerville’s city administrator, said the city and county both matched Methodist’s quarter-million dollars for the renovation. In its first year in Somerville, the university raised an additional $125,000. Tennessee’s governor later matched that $875,000 in his state budget.

Somerville is now in the seventh year of a 10-year agreement with the university, which leases the building from the city.

“We have a building, an asset, that’s probably worth $15 million,” Turner said. “It’s a four-year university right here in the heart of Fayette County.”

Mendi Donnelly, Somerville’s community development director, said the county still desperately needs a hospital, but “we’re thrilled we were able to make lemonade out of our lemons.”

Ninety miles northeast, in rural Carroll County, Tennessee, another shuttered hospital has found new life.

The closure of McKenzie Regional Hospital in 2018 dealt a major blow to the local economy. But Baptist Memorial Health Care, which operates a hospital in nearby Huntingdon, purchased the assets — including the building, land, equipment and ambulance service — and then donated the building to the town of McKenzie.

Cachengo, a technology company, eventually took over the space. Because of the hospitals’ electrical infrastructure, the site was perfect for a company like his, said Ash Young, Cachengo’s chief executive. Young said Cachengo is now looking to repurpose abandoned hospitals across the country.

Jill Holland, a former mayor of McKenzie and local government and special projects coordinator for the Southwest Tennessee Development District, believes the city can become a tech hub.

“It opens a lot of doors of opportunity for young people in the community,” Holland said.

Back in Jamestown, the vacant hospital is “deteriorating,” said Johnson, the county executive. “It could have been used to save lives.” Rennova did not respond to a request for comment.

The University of Tennessee Medical Center opened a freestanding emergency room elsewhere in Jamestown, saving residents a half-hour drive to the nearest emergency room. Johnson believes the former hospital building could serve the community as housing for the homeless or as a substance use disorder treatment facility.

Brock, the health care quality manager, believes things will improve in Jellico, but the community’s hopes have been dashed more than once.

Brock believes a freestanding emergency room could be a viable solution. She urges her community to adapt to “a new era” in rural health care in the United States, one in which a hospital must focus on the most urgent needs of its community and be realistic about what it can offer.

“Maybe it’s just an emergency room, a sustainable emergency room, where you could hold patients for a period of time and then transfer them,” Brock said. “And then you could build on that.”

She added: “There are options.”

KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism on health issues and is one of the core operating programs of KFF, an independent source of health policy research, polling and journalism. Learn more about KFF.

Subscribe to KFF Health News’ free morning briefing.

—

Previously published on kffhealthnews.org

***

—

Photo credit: unsplash

The article Rural Hospital Closures Leave Cities With Unhealthy Real Estate appeared first on The Good Men Project.