CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Governor Patrick Morrisey announced Tuesday that the state has sold four long-term healthcare facilities.
Hopemont Hospital in Terra Alta (Preston County), Jackie Withrow Hospital in Beckley, the John Manchin Sr. Healthcare Center in Fairmont, and Lakin Hospital in West Columbia (Mason County) have all been sold to the Marx Development Group for $60 million.
Marx Development Group owns and operates around 50 similar long-term care facilities in Indiana, Michigan, New York, Ohio and Kentucky.
With the purchase, Marx Development Group has agreed to build between three and five new facilities. As part of the agreement, these new facilities would be sourced with labor and materials from within the Mountain State.
“The sale of these facilities would produce a significant amount of revenue for the state, spur investment in the renovation and expansion of these facilities, and I think increase the level of quality of healthcare that’s provided to patients,” Morrisey said during his press conference in Charleston.
Morrisey said during his Tuesday press conference that a sale like this has been in the works for 10 years.
According to a release from Morrisey’s office, the four facilities were operating with a $6 million yearly loss. He says the buildings need serious renovation and investment and the state could not take on the load.
“Each of these facilities operates on a loss and needs serious capital investment, renovation, and in some cases, wholesale transformation,” Morrisey said. “To adequately address these long-term issues, the state would need to invest over $100 million over the next few years in rebuilding and renovating these facilities.”
Morrisey says that if the state did carve out the over $100 million for serious changes, the patients would suffer even more.
“Even if the state invested this money, the long-term operating cost are only going to continue to rise, but they’d rise without substantially improving the level of care that’s provided to the patients. Not a good mix,” Morrisey said.
Steven Allen Adams of the Ogden newspapers asked Morrisey what the sale will mean for other Department of Health facilities going forward. Morrisey says they’re not going to rule out future sales.
“We still have a number of facilities that we haven’t sold yet in terms of the hospitals so we’re looking at that, but naturally, the way this process evolved, it made sense to sell the first four. There’s still going to be a number of the remaining facilities that, for now, are under the auspices of Department of Health facilities,” Morrisey said.
“I know that some of the other facilities that we haven’t sold, we’re going to keep pursuing potential sale of those and look at different ways that that could be handled the right way because all those facilities are different. Some are in different straits than others,” he continued.
Morrisey added that he doesn’t believe this sale means a mass loss of jobs.
“We believe that all of this can be done that preserves many jobs and retaining a lot of the staff that have been working hard for many, many years to provide care for their fellow West Virginians,” Morrisey said.
The closing date of the sale is expected to be at the end of September, though Morrisey said there is a possible 30-day extension.