Novant Health will close Franklin Medical Center

Novant Health announced Wednesday that it will close the Franklin Medical Center, Franklin County’s only hospital, on Oct. 16 because not enough people are using it.

Nearly 90 percent of Franklin County residents travel outside the county for health care services, said Caryn Klebba, a spokeswoman for Novant Health, a Winston-Salem company that bought the hospital in 2009.

In May, Novant officials had said the company wanted to sell Franklin Medical Center to another health care company that would continue to provide medical services in Franklin, Wake County’s more rural northern neighbor. But Novant could not find a buyer for the 83-bed hospital, Klebba said.

“This was a very difficult decision,” she said of the move to close.

Franklin Medical Center stopped accepting new inpatient admissions at 6 p.m. Wednesday. The hospital is working to discharge patients or transfer them to another hospital by Oct. 16.

The emergency room will remain open until 7 a.m. Oct. 16.

The hospital’s 113 full-time and 16 part-time employees will receive a minimum of 60 days worth of pay and benefits, Klebba said. The N.C. Department of Commerce will provide them with job assistance.

Novant officials said in May that the company had spent millions to upgrade technology and recruit physicians and patients to Franklin Medical Center.

But the number of patients admitted to the hospital has decreased, the company said. The hospital sees an average of eight in-patients a day, six of whom are in the 13-bed geriatric behavioral health unit, Klebba said.

Last fall, when the company announced structural changes, the hospital was seeing an average of 18 patients a day, seven of them in the geriatric unit, she said. The hospital had an average of 65 empty beds each day.

John May, a Franklin County commissioner, said it’s disappointing to lose the county’s only hospital. Many residents who live in southern Franklin County travel to hospitals in Wake for services, he said, but it’s a longer drive for those who live in the central and northern parts of the county.

He said he was especially worried what will happen when patients need emergency treatment.

May said he thinks some Franklin County residents opt against the Franklin Medical Center because they believe they can receive better services elsewhere.

“I had used the local hospital some, but I think the attitude among some was the care was better in the larger hospitals,” he said.

Novant has had at times a strained relationship with Franklin County leaders. Some have said the company focused too much on the southern part of the county, near more populated Wake.

The most recent Census estimates put Franklin County’s population at less than 63,000 in 2014.

Novant had previously expressed interest in breaking into the health care market in Wake. The company hoped to open a hospital in Holly Springs, but the state gave permission to Rex Healthcare instead. Novant unsuccessfully appealed the decision in 2012.

Franklin Medical Center will be the third rural hospital in North Carolina to close in the last couple of years, said Mark Holmes, director of the N.C. Rural Health Research Program at UNC-Chapel Hill.

The hospital in Belhaven in Beaufort County closed last year, and the emergency room in Blowing Rock, in western North Carolina, closed in the fall of 2013.

Holmes said rural hospitals are closing across the country in part because some states, including North Carolina, have not expanded Medicaid, the federal health care program for the poor.

The Affordable Care Act reduced reimbursement payments to health care providers for uninsured patients, Holmes said. Without an expansion of Medicaid, he said, rural hospitals suffer.

In Belhaven, some residents are 60 miles from the nearest hospital emergency room. Franklin County residents don’t have as far to travel, but it’s still a loss to the community when a hospital closes, Holmes said.

“When these closures happen, they can have really negative effects,” he said.

This story was originally published October 7, 2015 at 1:28 PM with the headline "Novant Health will close Franklin Medical Center."