Cordell Memorial Hospital fills in gap left by Clinton closing

The doctors, nurses and Cordell Memorial Hospital (CMH) staff members are handling an influx of new patients due to the temporary closing of the Clinton hospital at midnight on December 31, 2022, when Alliance Health’s lease officially ended. The City of Clinton is working jointly with Carrus Health, the new manager of their hospital, to ensure the hospital will be up and running as early as possible. However, that opening could be months away.

According to the Beacon’s interview with Melinda Laird, CEO/CNO at CMH, Cordell has already doubled the number of patients they usually see in the emergency room. She has anticipated that by the end of January those numbers will have increased even more.

“It’s kind of one of those good things/bad things. It’s good volume for us and we’ve talked to all the physicians from over there. A lot of our Cordell people go there for their health care, so we’ve really stressed that they can get their lab work and radiology here; we can do all that. Labs have already doubled their number of testing that they do each day,” stated Laird.

CMH has continued to work in close communication with Sinor, the ambulance service out of Clinton. Sinor is splitting the transfers between CMH and Weatherford, as well as helping with transporting patients from CMH. Laird commented that they have been very helpful and that her staff and Sinor communicate daily to see where CMH is as far as receiving more patients and keeping Sinor apprised of any current situations. It has been stated that Cordell Emergency Services is not having to retrieve patients from Clinton and bring them to Cordell.

Have you guys been allowed to hire additional staff temporarily?

“We’re in the process of hiring a couple, but we are getting contract staff. We are increasing our number of licensed people we have per shift so that we have some focusing on the emergency room and another focusing on our in-patients. We’ve never had to really do that before because it usually flows pretty well. During the day time we’ll even have a few more [nurses and staff] because we send out patient treatments, infusions, those sort of things. We have someone specifically for that. We’ve increased staff and we’ve increased ratio.”

How many rooms do you actually have for in-patient care?

“We are licensed for 14 rooms. We have a couple that we use for sleep rooms if necessary. We’ve also had to use some of those rooms for emergency room overflow. So we may have five patients, but there may be six emergency room patients we’re using those rooms for, too. There was one day in particular that we had all 12 rooms full due to in-patients and influx from the emergency room.”

One concern of primary interest is, has the closing of the Clinton hospital financially benefited CMH? That is to be decided at a later date. It is a waiting game to see what the increase in volume and the increase in number of requests for testing will bring about for CMH.

Laird mentioned, “It definitely keeps us stable, doesn’t put us in any kind of bind, and hopefully we will see what the outcome is of this after the first month. Our X-ray and Nuclear Medicine Technology Program have already received increase in requests for testing.”

Although the situation may not be ideal, it has given CMH the opportunity to show just what all this rural hospital is capable of. Their number one goal is helping those in need of care.

“We’ve embraced the increase in volume and it has felt really good that we’ve been able to provide care to the people, to show them what we’ve got. The two years that I’ve been here, that’s one of things I’ve really tried to get everyone to understand is that this is not just bricks and mortar standing here, we want to do a lot of things for you and the community,” expressed Laird.

CMH would like the community to know that they are working on their workflow and they are ready to take in patients and assist with their needs.

Laird emphasized “We want you to know that we will take care of you, we want to take care of you.”