Community-Owned Hospital is a Vital Lifeline

HOPE uses federal tax credits to finance capital projects in rural, underserved areas where residents and institutions have few other options to modernize homes and facilities. In 2022, HOPE received $55 million in New Markets Tax Credits from the Treasury Department and granted them to institutions seeking financing for capital projects to benefit their communities.

Rural Community Owns Better Health Care with New Hospital
In May 2022, Tippah County Hospital leaders cut the ribbon on a new 56,000-square-foot facility in Ripley, Mississippi, with 25 beds, adding surgery to the medical services available to local residents and enhancing its primary care outpatient health clinic. In a rural county where 21% of the 22,000 residents live in poverty and the nearest emergency room is 25 miles away, this new hospital “is a vital lifeline for the community,” said CEO Dr. Patrick Chapman.

Chapman credits HOPE with “getting the ball rolling” in the hospital’s quest to finance a new building, beginning with a conversation with HOPE’S Executive Chief Program Officer, Cassandra Williams at a conference in 2018. The hospital was 70 years old, the building was deteriorating, and its leadership had concluded that constructing a new facility would be less expensive than trying to update the original building. Williams drove to Ripley, listened to details about the $26.5 million project and projected costs, said she believed it aligned with HOPE’s mission and capabilities, and determined that the hospital would need support from additional partners.

“Ms. Williams was an encouragement and a cheerleader. She helped us to believe that we could do this,” Chapman said. “When we started looking at this project and how daunting it was for a small community to pull this off, it was so important to have someone who says, ‘Look we’ve been through this before, we’ve made it happen in other communities, it can happen. You have to have a vision and stick to it and move forward.’ And so we did.”

HOPE agreed to provide $10 million in New Markets Tax Credits and three other partners provided a total of $15.5 million. Tippah County provided $11 million, the state provided $2 million, and the hospital arranged to borrow $2.5 million from HOPE and $2.5 million from a local bank.

“We’re doing primary care and preventive care. We’ve brought in cardiology, we’re doing cardiac screenings, we’re embarking on wound care and women’s health. We’ve brought in surgery,” Chapman said, adding that the emergency room served 5,799 patients in 2022. “Many lives were saved because they were stabilized here before they were transferred to another facility. They would not have made it otherwise.”

Tippah County Hospital is more than a health lifeline for the community. It’s an economic engine of the county. When leaders were developing their plan to build a new facility, the owner of a furniture manufacturer, the county’s largest factory, said that if the hospital closed he would have to close the factory because he would be unable to afford liability insurance without a local medical center. The hospital employs 165 people with annual salaries totaling $18 million. Indirectly, Chapman said the hospital indirectly creates an additional 322 jobs.

Chapman said that patients and local residents likely do not know about HOPE’s role in bringing them a brand-new hospital that plays such an important role in their health and economic well-being. “In my mind, they are the unsung heroes,” Chapman said, adding that leadership of other small hospitals now visit Tippah County. “I give them HOPE’s contact numbers and say, ‘Give them a call. You might be able to pull it off.’”