St. Mark’s Says Goodbye

Hospital Employees Linger in the Parking Lot After LG Medical Center Closes

There was orange juice, and champagne and fruit.

There was also hugs and tears – and an uneasiness about the future.

St. Mark’s Medical Center in La Grange officially closed at 7 a.m. Thursday morning, a victim of steep financial losses, a fate not uncommon to rural hospitals these days.

After the doors to the Emergency Room were locked the last time, the staff that had covered the final overnight shift at the facility gathered in the parking lot to linger over memories of the 18 years the hospital had been in existence.

“It’s like an Irish wake,” said St. Mark’s Physicians’ Director Allyson Borgstedte.

“Like someone died,” added Dr. Charles Anderson.

Some in attendance had worked there all 18 years, like Dr. Anderson and ER Director Laurie Quitta.

“I started as a candy stripper (hospital volunteer) at the age of 15 at Fayette Memorial,” said Quitta, speaking about St. Mark’s hospital predecessor in La Grange. “This was the best bunch of people you could ever work with. I don’t know what I’m going to do now. I’ve never been unemployed in my life. Never expected to be.”

Dr. Jessica Rockwood said she was saddened by those who were being left unemployed, “but the real loss is for this community.”

“People don’t think about the hospital until they need it,” said ER Dr. Roger Willis. He said he grew up in a commu-nity in rural Georgia that had a hospital close and it was a long drive to the nearest one. After the death of two high-profile citizens, the hospital eventually reopened.

The last night at the ER in La Grange was an eventful one.

A local man with respiratory distress was intubated and transferred to Austin and a women had a bad cut that had to be sewn up.

Shortly after the St. Mark’s closed for good at 7 a.m. someone drove up to go into the ER and had to be turned away.

“It felt wrong to say sorry, we’re closed,” said Rockwood. But all the hospital’s licenses to treat patients had expired at 7 a.m. As the former employees sat in the parking lot in lawn chairs they had brought for the occasion the sound of an ambulance on Highway 77 filled the air.

“I wonder where they are going?” someone said.

“They aren’t coming here,” another answered.

Nurse Alicia Rosiu said she lives in College Station but had driven to La Grange to work at St. Mark’s since 2018. “I drove here because it was the best place to work. They are like my family,” she said.

“We were the safety net for everybody,” Borgstedte said. “I’d love to see someone buy it and reopen it, but you never know what will happen to it.”

The 11th Hour Try to Keep the Hospital Open

Even until the final hours that St. Mark’s was open, the local group, Hospital Center for Excellence, was working to try to broker a deal to keep it open and transfer management of the hospital.

HCOE officials had informed the St. Mark’s board Oct. 3 that their plan to take over management of the hospital had fallen through – and that’s when the St. Mark’s board began the process of closing the hospital.

But just last week, HCOE officials said they were contacted by Progressive Health Group and offered assistance with the remaining needed funding and help serving as the hospital operator.

A special meeting of the St. Mark’s board of directors was called Wednesday afternoon at 1 p.m. (hours before the hospital was to close at 7 a.m. on Thursday) to consider the offer. After hearing details of the proposal, nobody on the St. Mark’s board would make a motion to vote on the new plan to try to keep the hospital open.

“There was no action, no vote,” St. Mark’s board chair Dudley Piland said.

Piland said the late try was too lacking in specifics to consider trying to reverse the closure, especially considering so many employees had either already been let go and/or accepted severance packages, and all of St. Mark’s medical licensing was set to expire the next morning.

Both Piland and board member Michael Corker used the phrase “too little, too late” to describe this final effort by HCOE to keep the hospital from closing.

“God bless them, they stepped up to the plate when no one else would,” Piland said of HCOE. “Had all this happened earlier it might have been a different story.”