It may not be of interest to you if you don’t live in Toombs County and the surrounding counties, but when your local hospital decides to build a new facility, it means a lot to a lot of people. In this interview with Alan Kent, CEO and President of Meadows Regional Medical Center, Alan gives us a broad overview of where the hospital is headed in finalizing the plans and building the new facility. We might have a state of the art hospital in two years or so.

Our current hospital is located in a 50+ year-old building with add-ons and modifications. At some point old equipment plants simply become too costly to maintain. That, together with the fact that the current facility is located on an inadequate 22 acre site, is probably the best justification for a new home, but for me, I just like new, state of the art anything. If you build it, they will come!

Meadows has come a long way in the 30 years since I moved to Toombs. It was a sleepy, country hospital that gave birth to babies and took out gallbladders the old fashioned way, cut that sucker out! We had a handful of doctors, mostly GPs like Drs. Merritt and Barfield, that did a little bit of everything. Health insurance wasn’t expensive and a lot of people did not have it. You had to work at Plant Hatch or be a teacher working for the state.

Technology has transformed healthcare, insurance companies have raped it, and government doesn’t know what to do with it. Oh well, we will still have a new hospital.

Keep up the good work Meadows Regional Medical Center!