MOULTON — With rural hospitals across the state and country struggling to stay open and Lawrence County facing potentially similar circumstances, the Lawrence Medical Center in Moulton and the Huntsville Hospital Health System have announced a partnership to modernize healthcare in Lawrence County.
The partnership and structure is similar to what the Huntsville Hospital Health System has used successfully in Colbert, Jackson, Morgan, Limestone, and Marshall counties, according to a news release from Lawrence Medical Center.
After an extensive study of facility challenges and financial pressures, the LMC Board concluded a new approach is necessary to ensure the future of local health services. In its decision, the release said, the board determined the hospital will stop providing inpatient care as well as close the emergency department to modernize outpatient facilities.
“This is the best path forward to ensure that the people of Lawrence County continue to have availability of healthcare in our community,” said LMC Board Chairman Gary Terry. “The care LMC provides today is overwhelmingly outpatient. Over 99% of our encounters each year are outpatient services such as primary care, imaging, lab testing, urgent care and physical therapy.
“On the other hand, having less than 1% of our total volume as inpatient care has placed the hospital in a situation that is not sustainable.”
The board voted to free up the financial resources necessary to modernize outpatient facilities and focus on the needs of the many outpatients.
Constructed in 1953, LMC is licensed as a 98-bed facility. Last year, the hospital served more than 60,000 outpatient and clinic visits.
“In order to maintain our license as an acute care hospital, significant resources are required to maintain an outdated facility that serves fewer than five inpatients each day,” said Terry. “The board has concluded that all resources must be refocused on expanding high-quality outpatient care.”
To accomplish this for the long term, Terry said the authority will engage in a 40-year lease agreement with HH Health to operate outpatient services.
LMC has had a long-standing affiliation with HH Health, but the two organizations have been financially separate.
The proposed structure, according to HH Health President and CEO Jeff Samz, maintains local involvement while shifting financial accountability and operational control to HH Health.
Local tax resources that are consumed to support hospital operations will be used to create a building fund to build outpatient facilities, he said.
“We are committing to help the Lawrence County Health Care Authority in finding a workable path,” Samz said. “The risis in rural healthcare in Alabama is a well-known fact. There is no easy solution.
“I applaud the LMC Board for making a hard decision. Building new outpatient facilities means many more Lawrence County residents will benefit from this tax support than happens today.”
Once new outpatient services are in place, the current facility would be vacated – a recent facility assessment showed the hospital building is beyond any reasonable hope of repair.
The assessment said updating the hospital facility to current code requirements is prohibitively expensive. HH Health will work with community leadership to find the best long-term use for the property once it is vacated.
Inpatient and Emergency Department services will likely end by the middle of the year, Samz said. TYhe the goal for HH Health is to expand the acuity of services at the urgent care locations to accommodate many of the patients using the emergency room today.
The agreement will ensure that 100% of Lawrence County support is invested in the new operation, and HH Health will pledge to reinvest 100% of any excess margin from services provided in the county back into the Lawrence County facilities.
Any employees in good standing who are impacted by the closure of inpatient and emergency services will be offered an opportunity elsewhere in the HH Health System.
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