After the only hospital in town closed, a North Carolina city directs its ire at politicians

WILLIAMSTON, N.C. (AP) — Weeds have punctured through the vacant parking lot of Martin General Hospital’s emergency room. A makeshift blue tarp covering the hospital’s sign is worn down from flapping in the wind. The hospital doors are locked, many in this county of 22,000 fear permanently.

Some residents worry the hospital’s sudden closure last August could cost them their life.

“I know we all have to die, but it seems like since the hospital closed, there’s a lot more people dying,” Linda Gibson, a lifelong resident of Williamston, North Carolina, said on a recent afternoon while preparing snacks for children in a nearby elementary school kitchen.

More than 100 hospitals have downsized services or closed altogether over the past decade in rural communities like Williamston, where people openly wonder if they’d survive the 25-minute ambulance ride to the nearest hospital if they were in a serious car crash.

When Quorum Health shut down Martin County’s 43-bed hospital, citing “financial challenges related to declining population and utilization trends,” residents here didn’t just lose a sense of security. They lost trust, too, in the leaders they elected to make their town a better place to live.

<bsp-list-loadmore data-module="" class=«PageListStandardB» data-gtm-region=«READ MORE» data-gtm-topic=«No Value» data-show-loadmore=«true» data-gtm-modulestyle=«List B»> <bsp-custom-headline custom-headline=«div»> READ MORE </bsp-custom-headline> <bsp-custom-headline custom-headline=«div»> Donor and consultant convicted again of trying to bribe North Carolina’s insurance commissioner </bsp-custom-headline> <bsp-custom-headline custom-headline=«div»> The late Rev. Billy Graham is immortalized in a statue unveiled at the US Capitol