Lawrence Medical Center in Moulton and the Huntsville Hospital Health System announced a merger on Monday.
With rural hospitals across Alabama struggling to stay open, the Lawrence Medical Center Board concluded that a new approach is necessary to ensure the future of local, community health services. After an extensive study of facility challenges and financial pressures, the board determined that the hospital would stop providing inpatient care and 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," Board chairman Gary Terry said. "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."
Constructed in 1953, LMC is licensed as a 98-bed facility. Last year, the hospital served over 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"In order to maintain our license as an acute care hospital, significant resources are required to maintain an outdated facility that serves fewer than five inpatients each day," said Terry.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."
Terry said the Authority will engage in a 40-year lease agreement with Huntsville Hospital Health System (HH Health) to operate outpatient services. Lawrence Medical Center has long-standing affiliations with HH Health, but the two organizations have been financially separate.
According to Jeff Samz, HH Health president and CEO, the proposed structure is like that Huntsville has used in Colbert, Jackson, Morgan, Limestone and Marshall Counties. The structure maintains local involvement while shifting financial accountability and operational control to HH Health. Local tax resources that are currently consumed to support hospital operations will be used to create a building fund to build new and modern outpatient facilities, according to Lawrence Medical Center.
"We are committing to help the Lawrence County Health Care Authority in finding a workable path. The crisis in rural healthcare in Alabama is a well-known fact. There is no easy solution," said Samz. "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."
According to Lawrence Medical Center, once new outpatient services are in place, the current hospital facility will be vacated. A recent facility assessment indicates the hospital building is beyond any reasonable hope of repair, and updating it to current code requirements is prohibitively expensive.
According to HH Health, inpatient and emergency department services at Lawrence Medical Center will likely end in 2025. Samz said that HH Health's goal is to expand the acuity of services provided at the urgent care locations to accommodate many of the patients using the emergency room today.
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.
Updated to clarify the following:
The emergency room at Lawrence Medical Center is still open and expected to remain open until the middle of 2025.
To connect with the author of this story or to comment, email caleb.taylor@1819News.com.
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