Five years after Kingsport, Tenn.-based Wellmont Health System shuttered Pennington Gap, Va.-based Lee County Regional Medical Center, the hospital plans to reopen under a new operator, according to a WYMT news report.
Wellmont closed the medical center in 2013, citing a lack of patients and declining reimbursements for patient care. It was the only hospital in Lee County.
In 2017, a Florida-based startup. Americore Health, purchased the medical center for $2 million, with plans to reopen the hospital as a 25-bed inpatient facility.
The Lee County hospital has been under construction since January and was initially slated to reopen in July, but the project was delayed until December.
Now, the hospital authority is holding Americore to a reopen date of Dec. 27, according to Jeanette Filpi, CEO of the Lee County hospital.
"We continue to push on this [deadline] daily. We don't intend to give up," Commissioner Howard Elliott on the Lee County Hospital Authority told WYMT.