Shuttered rural hospital reopens in Tennessee

As rural hospitals across the country brace for funding cuts and potential closures, one Tennessee facility is reopening its doors.

The Perry County Community Hospital started seeing patients around noon on Monday.

It’s nestled into rolling, wooded hills in Linden — a town of about 1,000 people between Columbia and Jackson on the western edge of Middle Tennessee. It’s considered a “distressed county,” which means it ranks among the poorest in the country.

“We’re here today not just to mark a new beginning, and not just opening a new hospital, but to restore trust, dignity and care to a community that needs care so much,” said new CEO Hali Sanders. “I promise that nobody who walks through these doors will be denied care, no matter your stature, your background or your story … We’re going to do everything we can to make sure that nobody falls through the cracks.”

As speakers introduced new leaders at the hospital, they praised their local bona fides. The new chief of nursing, for example, got her start there washing dishes at age 14 while her mother worked at the hospital. Sanders, the CEO, grew up in McEwen, an equally small town about 50 miles north of the hospital.

“We just want to make sure that we are expanding services so that folks like you aren’t having to drive hours to get to Nashville or Dickson to get the care that you need,” Sanders said.

Perry County was one of several hospitals in the area with a similar closure story. It was already on thin ice financially, since profits aren’t easy to come by in rural health. Then, private contractors got the hospital into debt and legal trouble with fraudulent billing schemes. In 2022, a panel of arbiters found that BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee alone had been over-billed more than $5 million. The hospital was ordered to pay that money back to the insurer.

Perry County is one of several hospitals that operator Braden Health has taken over in Tennessee over the past few years. That has included Houston County’s hospital, and the company is working to reopen the hospital in Decatur County.