In 1918, Williamson Memorial Hospital opened in Williamson, West Virginia to provide health care services to the residents of rural Mingo County.
After its closure in 2020, Williamson Memorial, the only hospital in Mingo County, was purchased by a local community-based healthcare facility, Williamson Health and Wellness Center, for $3.68 million.
Since then, millions of dollars have been invested in renovating the facility. The building has now been fully renovated, from its electrical system to its sanitation lines — with state-of-the-art equipment and an air-quality system that meets the latest regulatory standards.
In a Sept. 12 press release, the hospital announced that the West Virginia Office of Health Facility Licensure and Certification (OHFLAC) recently surveyed and licensed the facility to operate a 76-bed general hospital.
“This is a victory for our entire community,” said Williamson Health and Wellness Center CEO Dr. C. Donovan “Dino” Beckett. “The new Williamson Memorial is part of the fabric of the Tug Valley and all those who live and work here. It is critical to our integrated care system and our goal of health for everyone.”
According to a report from the Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform, almost 200 rural hospitals have closed since 2005.
Beckett said the new Williamson Memorial will rely on integration with Williamson Health and Wellness Center, a federally qualified health center, to bolster its long-term viability.
“Our integrated care model will help us ensure the new Williamson Memorial is not only back but is here to stay for generations to come,” Beckett said.
Tim Hatfield, CEO of the new Williamson Memorial, said the facility’s reopening is especially important for the community in the post-pandemic healthcare landscape.
“I’ve talked to the National Rural Healthcare Association in [Washington] D.C., and they told me in the past that our hospital was the first hospital to close because of the pandemic and COVID,” Hatfield said. “There’s been 30 hospitals to close after we closed related to COVID, but we are the first hospital that has ever reopened.”
Hatfield said the reopening of the hospital is a vital component of Williamson Health and Wellness’ goal to provide a continuum of care.
“It’s pretty special in 2024 to see any hospital in America that’s opening up,” Hatfield said. “The way we envision this with the FQHC (Federally Qualified Health Center), the clinics, we’ve got behavioral health, we’ve got family medicine, podiatry, occupational health, we got the Post 49 Farmers Market, dentistry, optometry, and now with the onboarding of the hospital, we provide a lot of comprehensive care to meet the community’s needs.”
While expanding access to care takes precedence for the Williamson Memorial team, the hospital’s reopening also creates employment opportunities with benefits in Mingo County. Hatfield says 65 percent of the hospital’s employees who worked at the hospital before it closed have returned to take care of their neighbors.
“About 65 percent of our employees that were here in 2020, left to go someplace else to work, but couldn’t wait to come back to work in our hospital, just because of the small town community feel hospital of taking care of your neighbors and friends,” Hatfield said. “That’s pretty neat.”
Appalachia Health News is a project of West Virginia Public Broadcasting with support from Marshall Health.