Patrick County's lone hospital has been closed since 2017. But after changing hands numerous times, the facility is set to reopen on Monday, January 5.
Braden Health purchased the shuttered hospital in Stuart, near the North Carolina line, in late 2024. The company has made its business out of purchasing closed rural
hospitals in the Southeast and reopening them. The Patrick County hospital will be the company's sixth, and its first in Virginia.
Kyle Kopec, Braden Health's chief compliance officer, says the company has a focused business model to overcome the forces pushing rural hospitals to close.
"Obviously there are some issues that are outside of anyone's control, but there were also a lot that are," Kopec says. "That came down to how payer contracts were negotiated, how the systems were run from a business perspective, how nurses were treated and how doctors were treated. We focused on solving the issues that we could and turned it into a sustainable model."
Kopec says the Stuart hospital presented some challenges, but not nearly as many as some of the other facilities it's opened. He says the company will hold a ribbon-cutting ceremony on January 5, then run down a checklist before reopening at full capacity.
"At our organization, we go from zero to 100 miles per hour very quickly, but at a very carefully organized way," Kopec says. "It's a very carefully orchestrated series of events."
Kopec says the hospital's history of financial troubles and failed promises by previous owners means it's important to get the facility open quickly.
"Patrick County is a community that's been burned many times before by people that have gone in and said, 'Oh we're going to open the hospital,' and never have," he says. "So we take the approach of our actions speak louder than words."
Kopec credited local legislators for taking pains to maintain the hospital's certificate of public need, a type of state licensing that helped ease its eventual reopening.
