Since 2010, 149 rural hospitals across the nation have closed or stopped providing inpatient care, leaving local communities to grapple with what to do with the buildings, KFF Health News reported June 26.
In many small communities, closing a hospital can have a detrimental effect on the local economy through a loss of jobs and traffic to other small businesses near the hospital. But those effects can be softened if the building is used for another type of healthcare facility.
However, in many places in Tennessee, empty hospital buildings are not reopening for healthcare. Instead, the buildings are converted for other purposes.
In Somerville, Memphis-based Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare donated its closed hospital building to the town and also gave it $250,000. The building is now a satellite campus for the University of Tennessee-Martin.
In Carroll County, Tenn., Memphis-based Baptist Memorial Health Care donated its closed hospital building, land and equipment to the town of McKenzie. A technology company took over the space, and former McKenzie Mayor Jill Holland told KFF Health News she believes the city can become a technology hub.
Although there are alternative uses for hospital spaces, many residents said they would prefer hospitals remain healthcare facilities.
"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," Tawnya Brock, a healthcare quality manager and resident of a small town whose hospital closed, told KFF Health News. "And then you build upon that."