Community Connection

Good morning.

I hope everyone had a nice Thanksgiving and ate some (hopefully not too much!) good food.

Earlier this week, I visited UMMC Grenada to attend an open house for the newly renovated student living space inside the hospital. A couple of areas previously used for clinical activities have been renovated to provide eight sleeping rooms and learning and lounging quarters for medical students who are there for a short rural medicine rotation. The federally funded IMPACT the RACE program helped fund some of the project, and we were honored to host state and local elected officials at the event. This arrangement makes it much easier on our students, saving them the often cost-prohibitive expense of lodging or a daily drive to and from Jackson. (You’ll learn more about and get to see these new spaces in Monday’s eCV.)

While there, I thought about how important and impactful UMMC Grenada is to that county and those that surround it. Patients at UMMC Grenada have a direct link to Mississippi’s most advanced health system. The same applies for UMMC Holmes County patients. Additionally, these community hospitals are beneficial touchpoints for our research and education missions. Access to hospital-based care in a rural area provides opportunities that aren’t always found in Jackson.

Since the former Grenada Lake Medical Center came under the UMMC umbrella in 2013, hundreds of thousands of Mississippians have received care supported by the state’s only academic medical center. And in many cases, they were able to get advanced-level and/or unique-to-UMMC care near their home and save the drive to Jackson and back. 

So far this fiscal year, there have been 676 inpatient admissions, 5,663 visits to the emergency department and 17,673 visits to UMMC Grenada-run clinics. For many of those patients, the care they received is only available in the area through UMMC.

The news is constantly filled with reports of hospital closings or rural hospitals in financial upheaval, and Mississippi is no different. UMMC Grenada and UMMC Holmes County serve vital roles in the communities they serve, and their importance to those residents grows when nearby hospitals close or service lines cease operations.

The 450 staff for UMMC Grenada – including 120 providers – and 132 staff for UMMC Holmes County – including 21 providers – are filling vital roles for Mississippians in the lower Delta and beyond. Through their dedicated efforts, these health care services, and more, are available in the area and backed by the state’s only academic medical center:

• Transplant Care
• Cardiology
• Children’s Primary and Specialty Care
• Inpatient, Outpatient and Ambulatory Surgery
• Urology
• Gastroenterology
• Wound Care
• Women’s Health
• Emergency Services
• Radiology
• Rehabilitation Services
• Swing Beds

I’m proud of the work our UMMC teams in Grenada and Lexington do for those communities and surrounding areas, and how much of a positive impact those hospitals have on our education and research missions. I anticipate continued growth and success through our community hospitals, which will help greatly in our efforts to build A Healthier Mississippi.