If everything goes well, Jellico’s hospital could be opening its doors again relatively soon following a 17-month closure, but how the facility got to this point is a story in and of itself.
For the first 40 years of its existence, Jellico Community Hospital (JCH) remained a steady presence in its community, but over the last 10 years it has closed a number of times as operators of the facility have come and gone.
Here is a brief history of the hospital.
In 1974, Jellico Community Hospital (JCH) started serving the region as a fully operational 54-bed acute care facility that offers comprehensive services, including diagnostic imaging, radiology, surgery (general, gynecological and vascular), nuclear medicine, wound care and hyperbaric medicine, intensive care, emergency care and physical therapy.
Although located in Tennessee, more than half of its patients have traditionally come from neighboring Kentucky.
While the City of Jellico owns the building and grounds, it has leased the facility to various healthcare operators.
In late April 2014, Adventist Health Systems (AHS) informed Jellico Community Hospital’s board of directors that after 40 years it was severing ties with the hospital due to healthcare reform and financial reasons. The hospital had until May 1, 2015, to find another healthcare partner.
“Clearly, the changes brought on by health reform are requiring us to move in this new direction,” Rich Reiner, CEO of Adventist Health System’s Multi-State Division said in 2014. “All hospitals today are being called on to deliver higher quality care at a lower cost. Hospitals like JCH, which are ‘islands’ in their market without connections to other nearby health facilities, face even tougher challenges because they have limited ability to share costs and reduce overhead.”
“The unfortunate reality is that AHS, with no other hospitals in the region, is no longer the optimum partner for JCH in this changed environment,” said Reiner. “Ideally, JCH should be operated by an entity that has other health facilities in the area. This could create cost-efficiencies and shared savings and could give JCH patients access to hard-to-recruit physician specialists from nearby areas.”
On May 1, 2015, Jellico Community Hospital officially became part of the Community Hospital Corporation’s (CHC) network of hospitals, which is a company out of Plano, Texas. CHC also entered into a clinical affiliation agreement with Baptist Health.
In late November 2018, Rennova Health Inc., which is located in West Palm Beach, Florida, announced that it had entered into a definitive asset purchase agreement to acquire Jellico Community Hospital.
The transaction was expected to close in the first quarter of 2019, subject to customary regulatory approvals and closing conditions.
At the time Rennova was operating Big South Fork Medical Center in Oneida, and Jamestown Regional Medical Center in Jamestown.
In late February 2021, the Jellico City Council voted to terminate the contract with Rennova Health and gave it 30 days to vacate the building over allegations that it was in violation of its contract.
Rennova Health was supposed to be running the hospital as an acute care location, which means the hospital was supposed to admit patients, but the hospital had not admitted a patient since late November 2020, Jellico’s then Mayor Dwight Osborn said in February 2021.
On March 1, 2021, ambulance services and others informed the mayor that there were signs on the hospital doors which stated that the emergency room was closed.
Rennova Health sent a statement to the News Journal in 2021 regarding the closure stating, “Repercussions of the decision made by the City of Jellico at last week’s public Board meeting mean it is no longer viable for Rennova Health, Inc. to consider the financial support or investment needed for Jellico hospital to continue to operate in any capacity on a daily basis. Regrettably, management of Rennova Community Health, Inc. that oversees our hospital operations in TN, had no option but to cease operations at the facility yesterday morning and will comply with the City of Jellico’s Board request in an orderly manner.”
According to Rennova Health’s March 2021 statement, it did not have any information about the hospital potentially reopening nor did it know what plans the city had for its building.
In September 2022, the City of Jellico announced that it had reached an agreement with Indiana-based Boa Vida Healthcare the prior year to take over as operators at the hospital, but a number of setbacks slowed its opening.
Boa Vida changed the name of the hospital from Jellico Community Hospital to Jellico Regional Hospital (JRH).
Due to the extensive amount of time the facility sat unused, many areas fell into disrepair. Before being able to reopen the facility, the Tennessee State Board of Health required a number of improvements be made to the building to meet hospital code requirements.
The hospital secured partial grant funding from various governmental sources, as well as a loan for $1.5 million through a lending company in order to finance the upgrades.
Bid processes for the grant funding and supply chain issues due to the COVID pandemic continually delayed the hospital’s reopening.
The facility finally received state licensure to operate in mid-2023, though a federal court lawsuit stated that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) required a survey to complete certification for the facility, which was not done until later that summer. In October of that year, JRH learned that the Medicare administrative contractor would not perform an interim settlement of the Medicare cost report, making funding not available until June the following year, according to a federal court lawsuit.
“At this point, JRH had incurred approximately $15 million in operating costs and was not receiving cooperation from the local medical community,” the lawsuit read. “It was at this time the JRH investors decided that further investment in JRH was not feasible and so the investors began to pursue an outside buyer.”
By that point, only portions of the hospital were operational, including the emergency room. In November 2023, the facility shifted its emergency room from full-time to on-call, resulting in several complaints, according to the lawsuit, leading to the hospital being placed under immediate jeopardy of closure by CMS and the State of Tennessee.
In 2024, Progressive Health assumed operations at Jellico Hospital after Boa Vida Healthcare subleased the facility to them.
The hospital closed in March 2024 following a joint audit of the facility by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and the State of Tennessee. Though it has sat dormant since that time, the city has continued to maintain the facility and the surrounding property since its closure.
Jellico Mayor Sandy Terry told the News Journal in November 2024 that the city had received a lease agreement from Community Hospital Management (CHM) to assume operations at the hospital.
However, during an Aug. 21, 2025, City of Jellico Board of Mayor and Alderman meeting, Phoenix Rural Health announced plans to re-open the facility.
