Another small rural North Carolina hospital joins the UNC Health system
The network of hospitals under the UNC Health umbrella has grown again with the addition of a non-profit in Robeson County with roots that go back more than a century.
Southeastern Health of Lumberton completed a management agreement with UNC Health this week and is no longer an independent hospital. UNC Health Southeastern becomes the 12th hospital system in the UNC network, which stretches from Hendersonville in the mountains to Jacksonville near the coast.
Southeastern’s board of trustees began exploring a merger with a larger health system two-and-a-half years ago to help it keep up with the changes in the health care business and the needs of the community, said Joann Anderson, its CEO.
“We were trying to do the same thing as larger organizations like Duke or Atrium, but they had armies of people,” Anderson said in an interview. “The question was, can we do enough fast enough to maintain the level of care and services that we wanted to provide, or do we need someone to partner with us to move things along faster.”
Southeastern expects UNC will help it attract and retain doctors and other health care workers, particularly specialists in fields such as cardiology and oncology. It also hopes UNC will help with both treatment and prevention programs to address chronic health problems such as heart disease, diabetes and COPD that are particularly common in the region.
Robeson County ranks last out of North Carolina’s 100 counties in terms of the overall health of its residents, according to an annual survey by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Among the measures in the survey: The number of preventable hospital stays per patient enrolled in Medicare in Robeson is twice the rate statewide.
Being part of UNC should also help during unusually challenging times, such as the coronavirus pandemic. Anderson said she asked CEOs of other small hospitals in the UNC system what support they had received with COVID-19.
“And every one of them said is what they valued of the UNC system is that there were experts available to them 24 hours a day,” she said. “That was the big thing from a management perspective, just knowing they have the resources.”
UNC sees mergers as part of its public mission
After considering several potential non-profit and for-profit partners, Southeastern asked to join UNC, Anderson said.
That request was key, said Jason DePlatchett, UNC’s executive director of system affiliations and integration. UNC Health doesn’t go prospecting for mergers and only goes where it’s invited and thinks it can help, DePlatchett said.
As a nonprofit owned by the state of North Carolina, UNC sees building a network of hospitals throughout the state as part of its duty to the public, DePlatchett said.
“We have a mission to improve the health and well-being of North Carolinians,” he said. “We believe the best way for us to live out that mission is to have access to patients in as many areas of the state as possible and where it makes sense to do that.”
UNC Health’s expansion beyond its base in Chapel Hill began in 2000, when it purchased Rex Healthcare in Raleigh. The move was seen as a foray into the growing and lucrative Wake County health care market dominated by WakeMed and Duke Health, which had purchased Raleigh Community Hospital two years earlier.
Subsequent mergers brought smaller hospitals into the system, starting with Chatham Hospital in Siler City in 2008 and Pardee Hospital in Hendersonville in 2010. UNC hospitals are now found in 12 counties, including Caldwell, Johnston, Lenoir, Nash, Onslow, Orange and Rockingham.
Small rural hospitals have struggled nationwide, as government and private insurance reimbursements fail to keep up with the costs of caring for an aging population. Since 2005, 11 rural hospitals in North Carolina have closed, according to The Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, including two nursing or rehabilitation facilities. Nationwide, the Sheps Center says, 176 rural hospitals have closed since 2005 — 134 of them in the last decade.
DePlatchett said UNC has declined to merge with some hospitals, particularly those that are simply looking for a financial infusion from a larger institution. There needs to be a “cultural alignment,” he says, of how the smaller hospital will change and improve by being integrated into the system.
DePlatchett said the smaller hospitals benefit from UNC’s expertise in management and IT, its cutting-edge medical research and the UNC medical school that produces doctors and other health care workers. But the network of hospitals also makes UNC stronger, he said, as when they work together to respond to the coronavirus outbreak.
“It’s certainly helpful to have a peer group of 12 or 13 hospitals that are working together to figure out how to get through this pandemic successfully,” he said.
Southeastern is a descendant of Thompson Hospital, Robeson’s first, founded in 1906. As it grew, it became Robeson County Memorial Hospital in the 1950s and Southeastern General Hospital in 1960, as it began to serve people in surrounding counties.
Today, Southeastern’s medical center is licensed for 292 acute care beds and 33 psychiatry beds, while its WoodHaven Nursing, Alzheimer’s and Rehabilitation Center is licensed for 115 beds. It also has a 12-bed hospice program.
This story was originally published December 5, 2020 at 10:00 AM with the headline "Another small rural North Carolina hospital joins the UNC Health system."
