Staff photo by Maura Friedman / Paramedic Sandra Gray, right, comforts RN Katrina Park upon hearing that staff will be laid off at Hutcheson Medical Center on Tuesday in Fort Oglethorpe, Ga.Also read
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A pulse remains for Fort Oglethorpe's Hutcheson Medical Center.
An Atlanta-based health care company and a United States bankruptcy judge breathed life into the shuttered hospital Monday, the day its license expired.
North Georgia residents need a hospital between Dalton and Chattanooga, and ApolloMD's desire to take a chance on the facility is good news for those residents.
The tentative agreement would allow ApolloMD to first be managers, infusing cash and handling the day-to-day operations, and later to purchase the hospital.
If the loose ends are tied up as appeared possible Monday, the hospital, which closed Dec. 4, could reopen within the next two weeks.
"The more time it's not operating," Hutcheson bankruptcy attorney Rob Williamson said, "the harder it is to reopen."
After offers from two other companies didn't work out in the last two weeks, the third appeared to be the charm for the struggling hospital. And it came from a company which had helped staff the hospital 's emergency department since June.
The offer of $4.2 million in cash was approved by U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Paul Bonapfel.
Another paramedic in the deal proved to be Georgia's Department of Community Health, which allowed the hospital a rare extension on the license as long as it opens by Christmas Eve.
Had an extension not been given, any purchasing health care company would have been forced to bring the structure up to code, which would have come at a cost that would have quelled the deal.
State Sen. Jeff Mullis, R-Chickamauga, helped work out the details for the extension with Community Health Commissioner Clyde Reese, according to state Rep. Tom Weldon, R-Ringgold.
Mullis and Weldon, whose constituents are among the primary North Georgia residents to use Hutcheson, deserve appreciation for going to the mat for the hospital.
The sale to Maybrook Healthcare for $7.3 million of Hutcheson's nursing home and child care center - two pieces of the Hutcheson campus which allegedly were healthier than the hospital - also was approved by Bonapfel. The nursing home's 109 residents, unlike the hospital's last patients, have been allowed to remain in place while the sale of the facility was negotiated.
"The sale is in the best interest of the estate," Bonapfel said, "and in the best interest of all the parties."
We hope the new agreement will give ApolloMD the time and opportunity to turn Hutcheson into the niche regional medical center it could be and again offer North Georgia residents an additional choice for their health care.