Forty-one hospitals have converted to rural emergency status since the designation took effect in 2023.
Under the designation, hospitals end inpatient services and instead offer emergency, observation and other outpatient services.
While providing an opportunity to preserve critical healthcare services in rural communities, it is also offering a path to revive hospitals that have closed, Kaufman Hall said in a July 10 report. The healthcare consulting firm noted that three hospitals that have closed in recent years are eyeing a return as rural emergency facilities.
“The fact that several of these announcements involve the reopening of closed hospitals — albeit in a different form — is a promising sign that different ways of thinking about rural healthcare could help maintain or restore access to essential services and enable a vehicle for such transformation,” Kaufman Hall said. “This trend also suggests that the partners in these transactions believe that there is a viable path forward for rural healthcare.”
Here are the closed hospitals that could soon return as rural emergency facilities:
- Greenville, N.C.-based ECU Health is planning to reopen Williamston, N.C.-based Martin General Hospital as the state’s first rural emergency hospital. The plan comes after Martin County officials signed a nonbinding proposal with ECU Health in mid-May for the development after the county’s board of commissioners voted in early January to lease or sell the hospital, which shut down Aug. 3, 2023, after it sought Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection.
- Southwest Georgia Regional Medical Center in Cuthbert, which closed in October 2020, received funding to reopen as a critical access hospital and eventually transition to a rural emergency hospital. Renovations are expected to take about a year and a half, though an exact timeline for reopening has not been finalized.
- Jamestown, Tenn.-based Phoenix Rural Health secured a lease for Jellico (Tenn.) Regional Hospital, with plans to reopen it as a rural emergency hospital later this year. Since opening in 2020, Jellico has closed multiple times and has been managed by three different companies. It ceased operations in March 2024.
