After weeks of drama, disappointment, Atlanta Medical Middle to shut

Regardless of these losses, Wellstar Well being System nonetheless earned cash. In the identical interval, the interval ending June 30, 2022, your complete Wellstar Well being System reported working revenue of $106 million, after bills had been subtracted.

Wellstar is a nonprofit hospital system, which means that it pays no taxes and is anticipated to supply take care of the wellbeing of the neighborhood.

Bree Davis, a brand new mother, hasn’t used the Atlanta Medical Middle’s downtown hospital but. However she had meant to if she wanted assist for her new child.

Davis selected a pediatrician for her new child within the Wellstar medical workplace buildings subsequent to AMC, partly as a result of the hospital was subsequent door. Chatting with a reporter on Oct. 25 was the primary time Davis discovered the hospital was per week away from shutting down.

“I’m sort of in shock,” Davis mentioned. “As a result of I didn’t know that they had been closing.”

Having her new pediatrician throughout from a hospital gave her and her new child safety: “Simply in case if one thing was to go on, you recognize, she’s proper throughout the road. So actually, entry is correct there.”

Atlanta and state leaders and well being officers mentioned they had been blindsided by the information.

Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens has repeatedly condemned Wellstar’s determination to shut the hospital, and the well being system’s failure to alert native leaders prematurely. Nonetheless, early on following the announcement, officers mentioned they had been unsure that something could possibly be executed to cease it. Democratic leaders throughout the state noticed the closure as rallying cry for Medicaid enlargement in Georgia.

Native and state officers have scrambled to search out funds to bolster the close by hospitals the place former AMC sufferers are actually anticipated to hunt care.

On Sept. 15, Gov. Brian Kemp introduced he would ship $130 million in assist from federal American Rescue Plan Act funds allotted to Georgia to the Grady Well being System so as to add about 185 hospital beds. Moreover, the DeKalb County Board of Commissioners cleared a complete of $20 million in funding to each Grady and Emory Hillandale hospitals.

Beverly Walker was at a physician’s appointment final week in one of many Wellstar medical workplace buildings subsequent to AMC. She can be a longtime buyer of the hospital itself — for possibly 20 years, she mentioned. She was in there simply this 12 months, getting an X-ray for her hand.

“I feel it’s unhappy,” Walker mentioned. “There’s lots of people who went there, and it’s wanted.”

To forestall the sale and redevelopment of the big AMC website — which covers almost two metropolis blocks — Dickens banned new land use purposes ordering the town’s Planning Division to refuse any purposes for rezoning, constructing permits or land disturbances on the land. Dickens has mentioned Atlanta needs to prioritize the continued use of the location — in entire or partly — for well being care providers.

Finally, the Atlanta Metropolis Council unanimously voted to increase the location redevelopment ban for 180 days till April 23, 2023.

Most native emergency rooms ran above capability earlier than AMC’s closure. Different space hospitals have already begun to expertise will increase in emergency room site visitors following AMC’s ER closures. Now, just one Degree 1 trauma middle stays within the metropolis, at Grady. Degree 1 trauma facilities are capable of present care for each side of an damage.

Greater than two-thirds (67.3%) of the 4,281 emergency room sufferers that AMC noticed in its downtown and East Level areas in 2019 had been Black, and over half (51.5%) had been Medicare and Medicaid recipients, in accordance with information launched by Wellstar in 2020.

Native officers met at an occasion hosted by the Atlanta Regional Collaborative for Healthcare Enchancment (ARCHI) as a part of a seamless dialog to debate the well being care wants of the town on October 21. Well being care advocates are involved that the town’s underserved communities will face worse well being outcomes on account of the closure.

“It’s incumbent upon native officers, each on the native stage and the state stage, to begin speaking to the residents as a substitute of speaking to one another,” mentioned Gerald Griggs, president of NAACP Georgia, throughout a press convention exterior Atlanta’s metropolis corridor on Oct. 25.

Only a day earlier, The Atlanta Journal-Structure reported Wellstar had plans to completely shut down their East Level clinic which continues to be serving walk-in sufferers. These sufferers will likely be shifted to a clinic subsequent door, which Wellstar will subsidize for a restricted time. Wellstar wouldn’t verify the report.

“We’re getting worse as a substitute of higher,” Richard Rose, president of the Atlanta-Fulton County Department of the NAACP, mentioned. “We’ve acquired to cease the decline and transfer ahead.”

AJC workers author Ariel Hart contributed to this report.

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About Atlanta Medical Middle

Beds: 460

Location: Boulevard and Parkside Drive

Owned by: Wellstar Well being System since 2015

Closure date: Nov. 1, 2022

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Timeline: Atlanta Medical Middle closes