MEXICO − Noble Overall health announced one particular year ago it would close its neighborhood hospitals in each Audrain and Callaway counties. To date, residents nevertheless do not have access to emergency surgeries or wellness care beyond nearby wellness clinics.

Employees received tiny notice just before Noble Overall health either furloughed or laid off at least 175 personnel at the two mid-Missouri hospitals in March 2022. It came only a week just after the firm notified the neighborhood of what was supposed to be a short-term suspension of service to the location.

A timeline of the developments concerning the Audrain and Callaway Neighborhood Hospitals’ suspension of solutions.

Susan Honaker, a former employee at the Audrain County place, stated she was laid off all of a sudden, along with numerous of her peers with whom she had develop into close.

“I was one particular [employee] that stayed till the really finish,” Honaker stated. “[I] received a letter on a Friday evening, not recognizing that they had been going to close the hospital till the evening I got that letter [saying], ‘Don’t go to operate on Monday. You have been terminated.'”

Now, the indicators that utilised to point to the emergency space at the Audrain Neighborhood Hospital are nevertheless covered by duct tape, the parking lot is empty and the windows are nevertheless boarded up following a break-in shortly just after the hospital closed.

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Honaker, who worked in the records division, stated she is nevertheless waiting for spend from the final weeks of functioning at the hospital.

“It was actually type of devastating,” she stated. “Everyone I worked with had been extended-term personnel, and they had been like household.”

Honaker says she has worked in wellness care for 26 years, all of which had been in Mexico. She’s weathered the storm via quite a few owners which includes Noble Overall health and Platinum Overall health, the firm that briefly took more than the facility final year.

Gailyn Fennewald, a lifetime resident in Mexico, says the prospect of traveling all the way to Columbia for far more complicated procedures worries her.

“It really is been scary,” Fennewald stated. “And for most of the persons in Mexico, to know that if you had an emergency—a heart attack, a stroke—you know 40 minutes is the closest hospital and at times that can imply life or death.”

Having said that, bigger chains of clinics have moved in to fill the gap in Mexico left by Noble Health’s departure. Boone Overall health and MU Overall health Care have each set up clinics in Mexico to deliver urgent and key care solutions. But Fennewald says the new clinics have not distracted residents from pushing for a new hospital in town.

“We have a lot of persons in town that are attempting really hard to get a new hospital or get this one particular redone or to get a new one particular constructed,” Fennewald stated. “And I commend their efforts for the reason that it really is a significant deal and it really is a significant service we will need right here in town.”