JELLICO, Tenn. — In March 2021, this town of about 2,000 residents within the hills of East Tennessee lost its hospital, a 54-bed acute care unit. Campbell County, where Jellico is situated, has ninetieth out of 95 counties in Tennessee when it comes to health outcomes The poverty rate is nearly twice the national average, so the lack of essential health care has had a significant impact across the region.
“Oh my gosh,” said Tawnya Brock, a healthcare quality manager and Jellico resident. “This hospital was not only the lifeblood of healthcare for this community. It was also the center of the community economically and socially.”
Since 2010, 149 rural hospitals within the United States have either closed or stopped providing inpatient care, in keeping with the Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research on the University of North Carolina. Tennessee has the second-most closures of any state, with 15, and essentially the most closures per capita. Texas has the best variety of rural hospitals, with 25 closures.
Every time a hospital closes, it has an impact on health care and the economy in a community. When Jellico Medical Center closed, about 300 jobs were lost. Restaurants and other small businesses in Jellico also went bankrupt, said Brock, who’s a member of the Tennessee Rural Health Association Legislative Committee. And town has to cope with the empty shell of a hospital.
Dozens of small communities are considering what to do with closed hospitals. Researchers on the Sheps Center have found that while a closure has a negative impact on the local economy, those effects could be mitigated if the constructing is converted into one other form of health care facility.
In Jellico, the constructing that housed the medical center is owned by town. Mayor Sandy Terry said it’s in fair condition. But the last operator, Indiana-based Boa Vida Healthcare, is licensed to operate a medical facility there but has not yet announced its plans for the constructing, leaving Jellico in limbo. Terry said local officials are talking to health care providers who’ve expressed interest in reopening the hospital. That is their preferred option. Jellico has no Plan B.
“We're just hoping that maybe someone will take it on,” Terry said. The nearest emergency rooms are a half-hour drive away in LaFollette, Tennessee, and across the state line in Corbin, Kentucky.
An hour and a half away in Fentress County, the constructing that after housed Jamestown Regional Medical Center has been vacant since June 2019, when Florida-based Rennova Health — which previously operated Jellico Medical Center — closed it.
Jimmy Johnson, the district manager, said Rennova's departure from Jamestown was so abrupt that “the beds were all perfectly made” and IV poles and wheelchairs were within the hallways. About 150 jobs were lost with the middle's closure.
Rennova still owed Fentress County $207,000 in taxes, Johnson said, and in April the property was auctioned off. A neighborhood business owner bought it for $220,000. But Rennova was given a yr to reacquire the constructing for the back taxes plus interest, and he or she did so in a matter of days.
Abandoned hospital buildings dot the map in central and eastern Tennessee. But within the western a part of the state, two communities have found a use for his or her vacant buildings, if not reopening hospitals.
Somerville, about an hour east of Memphis, lost its Methodist Fayette hospital in 2015. Its parent company, Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare, donated the constructing to town and contributed $250,000. The constructing is now a satellite campus of the University of Tennessee-Martin.
The renovation was driven by town, which used other funds. Bob Turner, Somerville's city manager, said each town and county matched the quarter-million dollars Methodist raised for the renovation. In its first yr in Somerville, the university raised one other $125,000. The Tennessee governor then matched that $875,000 in his state budget.
Somerville is now within the seventh yr of a 10-year agreement with the university, which leases the constructing from town.
“We have a building, an asset, that's probably worth $15 million,” Turner said. “It's a four-year university 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 turn our lemons into lemonade.”
Ninety miles northeast, in rural Carroll County, Tennessee, one other closed hospital has been given latest life.
The closure of McKenzie Regional Hospital in 2018 was a blow to the local economy. But Baptist Memorial Health Care, which operates a hospital in nearby Huntingdon, purchased the assets – including the constructing, land, equipment and ambulance service – and subsequently donated the constructing to town of McKenzie.
Eventually, technology company Cachengo took over the space. The hospitals' electrical infrastructure made the location an ideal fit for a corporation like his, said Ash Young, Cachengo's CEO. Young said Cachengo is currently looking into repurposing abandoned hospitals across the country.
Jill Holland, former mayor of McKenzie and native government and special projects coordinator for the Southwest Tennessee Development District, believes town can develop into a technology hub.
“It opens many doors and opportunities for the youth in the community,” Holland said.
In Jamestown, the vacant hospital is “deteriorating,” County Manager Johnson said. “It could have been used to save lives.” Rennova didn’t reply to a request for comment.
Brock, the health care quality manager, believes things will improve in Jellico, however the community has its Hopes disenchanted greater than once.
Brock believes a freestanding emergency department could possibly be a viable solution. She is urging her community to reply to “a new day” in rural health care in America, a day when a hospital must give attention to essentially the most pressing needs of its community and be realistic about what the hospital can provide.
“Maybe it's just the emergency department, a sustainable emergency department where you can house patients for a period of time and then transfer them,” Brock said. “And then you build from there.”
She added: “There are options out there.”
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