美国国家公共电台 NPR--After a decadelong spate of closures, one rural Tennessee hospital reopens

After a decadelong spate¹ of closures, one rural Tennessee hospital reopens

Transcript²

When rural hospitals go out of business, they're frequently gone for good. But now, some comebacks are a welcome sign for communities that have been without easy access to health care.

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

When a rural hospital closes, it usually closes for good. A lot of smaller cities and towns in this country have lost their local hospital care, which is why a hospital reopening in Brownsville, Tenn., is a big deal. Here's Blake Farmer of our member station WPLN.

BLAKE FARMER, BYLINE³: The sun is rising over the Haywood County Community Hospital, and Michael Banks stands out front in a seersucker suit, welcoming back employees in the dim light.

JEANINE ING: There's no backing out now.

MICHAEL BANKS: All right. Go get your stuff set up. Let's get ready to rock and roll.

FARMER: Banks is a local attorney who was chair of the hospital board. Now he's CEO.

BANKS: So I remember getting called into that office right there by the CEO at the time and him telling me that they were closing. And that was in 2014.

FARMER: This hospital was part of a wave of closures that hit states that have refused to expand Medicaid to cover the working poor. In all, 16 rural hospitals closed in Tennessee - more than anywhere but Texas.

BARRY DUNAGAN: This building has sat here for six or seven years with no air circulation, no water in the lines. Everything just deteriorates⁴.

FARMER: Barry Dunagan is back as head of maintenance after eight years. The mothballed hospital was handed to the local government, and Dunagan assumed it would be bulldozed.

DUNAGAN: It takes a world of work to ever get it back.

FARMER: But it's really happening. They're down to installing the doorstops for the first phase of renovations. A new company out of Florida called Braden Health acquired this and three other hospitals between Nashville and Memphis. It's one of a handful of companies trying to resuscitate⁵ closed rural hospitals now that communities are practically giving them away. But it takes millions of dollars to get them going, even if everything goes right. Braden Health's Terry Stewart says the Haywood hospital was supposed to open in January.

TERRY STEWART: And we started seeing some spots of mold come back up. So we gutted⁶ the building out again.

FARMER: That mold severely⁷ complicated Stewart's pet project - preserving hundreds of ceramic⁸ tiles that local kindergartners painted and put on the walls in the late 1990s. Saving them has become a sort of symbol of the new owner's commitment to the community.

STEWART: If they just had one crack, I glued them back together and put them back on the wall just so I could say I saved everything I could possibly save.

FARMER: Manager Tyeshia Allen, who grew up here, is still looking for hers.

TYESHIA ALLEN: I'm going to find it. I got plenty of time to find it, so yeah. When I came here the first time, I was like, oh, my God, they still have the handprints.

FARMER: Allen moved to Illinois after the hospital closed, but the reopening reeled her home to Tennessee. She's back managing the supply room, where she's still getting the bedpans and bandages in order.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: How about we just put them right there? Will it fit? Perfect.

FARMER: Allen says she's trying to bring other co-workers back, too. Several nurses are driving an hour or more to work at other hospitals. Then there are the patients who've gotten used to driving to the cities for care, but not her mom, who's ready for an excuse to be admitted.

ALLEN: My mom said - she was like, well, I'm just going to come next week. I'm like, what is going to be wrong with you next week to just come to, you know, a doctor's office. Everybody's excited.

FARMER: The excitement is real, but it will take time to change habits and rebuild trust. It took until the afternoon for the first patient to show up. But Amy Spotts, who came in with abdominal⁹ pain, left a satisfied customer.

AMY SPOTTS: My husband drove by this morning and saw the sign out that said it was open. And I called him earlier and I said I need to go somewhere.

FARMER: She and her husband didn't realize they'd be making history - the first patients in Tennessee's first rural hospital to successfully reopen.

For NPR News, I'm Blake Farmer in Brownsville, Tenn.

(SOUNDBITE OF JOAN JEANRENAUD'S "AXIS")

INSKEEP: That story was produced in partnership¹⁰ with Nashville Public Radio and Kaiser Health News.

(SOUNDBITE OF JOAN JEANRENAUD'S "AXIS")

1 spate   

n.泛滥，洪水，突然的一阵

参考例句：

• Police are investigating a spate of burglaries in the area.警察正在调查这一地区发生的大量盗窃案。
• Refugees crossed the border in full spate.难民大量地越过了边境。

2 transcript   

n.抄本，誊本，副本，肄业证书

参考例句：

• A transcript of the tapes was presented as evidence in court.一份录音带的文字本作为证据被呈交法庭。
• They wouldn't let me have a transcript of the interview.他们拒绝给我一份采访的文字整理稿。

3 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

4 deteriorates   

恶化，变坏( deteriorate的第三人称单数 )

参考例句：

• After a few years' planting, the quality of the potato crop deteriorates. 土豆种了几年之后就会退化。
• Virus activity deteriorates in plasma stored at room temperature. 在室温下储藏的血浆中病毒活动逐渐衰退。

5 resuscitate   

v.使复活，使苏醒

参考例句：

• A policeman and then a paramedic tried to resuscitate her.一名警察和一位护理人员先后试图救活她。
• As instructed by Rinpoche,we got the doctors to resuscitate him.遵照仁波切的指示，我们找来医生帮他进行急救。

6 gutted   

adj.容易消化的v.毁坏（建筑物等）的内部( gut的过去式和过去分词 )；取出…的内脏

参考例句：

• Disappointed? I was gutted! 失望？我是伤心透了！
• The invaders gutted the historic building. 侵略者们将那幢历史上有名的建筑洗劫一空。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

7 severely   

adv.严格地；严厉地；非常恶劣地

参考例句：

• He was severely criticized and removed from his post.他受到了严厉的批评并且被撤了职。
• He is severely put down for his careless work.他因工作上的粗心大意而受到了严厉的批评。

8 ceramic   

n.制陶业，陶器，陶瓷工艺

参考例句：

• The order for ceramic tiles has been booked in.瓷砖的订单已登记下来了。
• Some ceramic works of art are shown in this exhibition.这次展览会上展出了一些陶瓷艺术品。

9 abdominal   

adj.腹（部）的，下腹的；n.腹肌

参考例句：

• The abdominal aorta is normally smaller than the thoracic aorta.腹主动脉一般比胸主动脉小。
• Abdominal tissues sometimes adhere after an operation.手术之后腹部有时会出现粘连。

10 partnership   

n.合作关系，伙伴关系

参考例句：

• The company has gone into partnership with Swiss Bank Corporation.这家公司已经和瑞士银行公司建立合作关系。
• Martin has taken him into general partnership in his company.马丁已让他成为公司的普通合伙人。