Supporting efforts to keep our community healthy

Our community — along with communities around the world — is navigating unprecedented challenges as the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) continues to spread. The cycle of our lives and neighborhoods has been altered, and we are all working to accommodate an ever-changing new normal. Fear and uncertainty complicate our collective abilities to do this.  

Hospital leaders reflect on five years with LifePoint

In 2014, Duke LifePoint Healthcare purchased three hospitals in Western North Carolina with the promise of drastically improving rural health care services. 

2014: Transition to for-profit health care

Area hospitals finally found some steady financial footing in 2014 after years of floundering, trying to keep their heads above water as providing health care to rural Appalachia became more challenging. 

Haywood hospice patients to move to hospital

A press release issued by Haywood Regional Medical Center on Oct. 26 touted renovations to an existing facility that will provide better building utilization and expansion of patient care services, but that’s not the part of the statement that’s got some local residents upset. 

LifePoint Health to merge with RCCH Healthcare Partners

LifePoint Health, the parent company of three regional hospitals in Western North Carolina, recently announced its plans to merge with RCCH Healthcare Partners.

Haywood Regional expands behavioral health unit

Haywood Regional Medical Center, a Duke LifePoint Health hospital, has completed a 17-bed expansion to its behavioral health wing on the sixth floor.

Local nonprofit selected to manage hospital funds

Barring an unforeseen breakdown in contract negotiations, the Haywood Healthcare Foundation will manage the estimated $20 million in funds that resulted from the sale of Haywood Regional Medical Center to Duke LifePoint in 2014.

Future of hospital foundation funds to be decided

Two organizations hoping to manage an estimated $20 million in restricted funds resulting from the sale of Haywood Regional Medical Center to Duke LifePoint in 2014 made their case Oct. 17 to the Haywood County Board of Commissioners.

High stakes in hospital tax dispute

Haywood Regional Medical Center and county officials  are locked in a dispute over how much the hospital should pay in property taxes.

Doing business with your neighbors

op barbeeIn not every town do the children of doctors and lawyers go to the same schools as the children of teachers and mill workers, but in Haywood County, that’s the case. When I was teaching full-time in the classroom, I taught students whose parents owned boats and vacation homes, and I taught students who slept in a car and ate meals at The Open Door.

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