Clinton County Hospital will remain open.

That was the bottom line that came out of the announcement last week that a Bowling Green healthcare firm had taken steps to buy the local 42 bed facility that has been facing dire financial straits for several years.

In a press release issued last Friday that followed a host of meetings last week, it was announced that Commonwealth Health Corporation (CHC) would assume management of the Clinton County Hospital immediately.

The firm, which is the parent company of The Medical Center in Bowling Green, said that the complete acquisition would be final next month in March, at which time the local hospital would become known as The Medical Center at Albany.

The acute care, not-for-profit hospital has served Albany and Clinton County since 1951 and was formerly known as the Clinton County War Memorial Hospital.

While the Clinton County Hospital will be the sixth facility operated by CHC, it will be the most distant hospital from its Bowling Green base operated by the company.

In addition to Clinton County and Bowling Green, the firm also operates medical centers in Caverna, Franklin and Scottsville.

Clinton County native Connie D. Smith, who is President and Chief Executive Officer of CHC and the Medical Center, played an integral part in making the acquisition work, and noted in the press release announcing the purchase, how pleased she was to have seen the deal become a reality.

“We look forward to serving the healthcare needs of residents in Clinton County and providing access to quality care close to home,” Smith said. “We are honored to have been invited into the community and are committed to improving and expanding local healthcare services.”

Smith is the daughter of Willie and Dean Moreland of Albany, and the granddaughter of the late Willie and Eunice Bowlin, and John and Bessie Moreland.

She and her husband, Ricky K. Smith, have one daughter, Melanie Wyatt, married to Jeremy Wyatt, and they have a son, Lincoln.

CHC was asked to begin looking at making the purchase of the Albany hospital in October, 2015, beginning with an initial evaluation of the operations at the hospital to determine the feasibility of acquiring the hospital.

Beginning last week, with the change in management, CHC put Eric Hagan in place as an Interim Administrator.

Hagan is currently a Vice President of Commonwealth Health Corporation and was on-site at the Clinton County Hospital beginning last Thursday.

In a brief telephone interview Monday morning, Hagan told the Clinton County News that both he and the entire CHC management staff was excited about the acquisition and the opportunity that will follow.

“Obviously we want to evaluate things and see how things are operating before we make any decisions,” Hagan said. We are currently under a management agreement until March and we are looking at the closing date for the acquisition being near the end of March.

J.D. Mullins, who was the acting Administrator for the Clinton County Hospital at the time that CHC entered into the management agreement, was not a part of the changeover arrangement.

Hagan also said that CHC would be looking at ways to offer more options to the local community as far as health care needs, noting that those options could include bringing in specialists in fields such as cardiology and oncology just to mention a couple, which would give local patients the opportunity to receive treatments in specialized fields without having to travel long distances.

“We feel like there is a need for quite a few options, but it’s just a matter of us figuring out where the greatest needs are first,” Hagan said. “We are very proud about being here and this is a great compliment to our operation.”

Hagan added that the hospital would continue to offer 24/7 Emergency Room treatment to the community.

Like many rural health care facilities, the Clinton County Hospital has been experiencing financial difficulties for some time and officials have place dmuch of the blame on changes in the Medicare and Medicaid payment systems.

Patients who fall under the Medicare and Medicaid systems make up as much as 80 percent of the hospital’s revenue.

Former Clinton County Hospital Administrator J.D. Mullins announced in October, 2014 the plans for the local facility to file Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

That came some six years after the hospital finished a major construction effort that saw the facility more than double in size, taking the 49,000 square feet of space and more than doubling it with an additional 55,000 square feet of new space.

That project left the local facility some $18 million in debt, most of which was a loan from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) which financed the bulk of the building project.

However, in August, 2015, Mullins announced that the USDA had agreed to reduce the loan obligation by more than half of the original amount, to just under $8.5 million.

At that time, Mullins said that an attempt to find a buyer for the local hospital would become a much more attractive proposal to another hospital or hospital management firm.

According to last week’s announcement by CHC, it was shortly after that reduction of debt by the USDA, that the Bowling Green firm was first asked by the Clinton County Hospital to evaluate operations to determine the feasibility of acquiring the hospital.