Inside the political fight to build a rural Georgia hospital

Ed Whitehouse stood alongside a state highway in rural Butts County, Georgia, and surveyed acres of rolling fields and forests near Interstate 75. Instead of farmland and trees, he envisioned a hospital. Whitehouse, a consultant for a local health care company that wants to build a hospital there with at least 150 beds, said the group could break ground within a year. The idea, he said, is to provide medical services beyond those currently provided by Wellstar Sylvan Grove Medical Center, an aging, nonprofit “critical access” hospital that offers limited services, including emergency care, rehabilitation, wound care, and imaging. But Read More