Closing of rural hospitals leaves towns with unhealthy real estate

Abandoned hospital buildings dot the map in central and east Tennessee. But in the western part of the state, two communities found uses for their empty buildings, albeit 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 town and threw in $250,000. The building is now a satellite campus for the University of Tennessee-Martin.

The conversion was pushed along by the town leveraging other funding. Bob Turner, Somerville’s city administrator, said both the town and the county matched Methodist’s quarter-million dollars toward the renovation. In its first year in Somerville, the university raised another $125,000. Tennessee’s governor then matched that $875,000 in his state budget.

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

“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 is still in desperate need of a hospital, but “we’re thrilled that we were able to make lemonade out of our lemons.”

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

The closing 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, bought the assets — including the building, land, equipment, and ambulance service — and subsequently donated the building to the town of McKenzie.

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

Jill Holland, McKenzie’s former mayor and a local-government and special-projects coordinator for the Southwest Tennessee Development District, believes the town can become a technology hub.

“It’s opening a lot of doors of opportunity for the youth 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, sparing residents a half-hour drive to the closest ER. Johnson believes the old hospital building could serve the community as housing for those who are homeless or as a facility to treat substance use disorder.

Brock, the health care quality manager, thinks things will get better in Jellico, but the community has had its hopes dashed more than once.

Brock believes a freestanding emergency room could be a viable solution. She urges her community to be responsive to “a new day” in rural health in America, one in which a hospital must focus on its community’s most urgent needs and be realistic about what that hospital can provide.

“Maybe it is just the 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 build upon that.”

She added, “There are options out there.”