On Wednesday, Wellstar Health System announced it was closing the Atlanta Medical Center (AMC) in Atlanta’s Old Fourth Ward neighborhood on Boulevard Avenue, adjacent to Freedom Parkway and close to I-20. The decision has sent city and other elected officials into a panic for the healthcare of Atlanta residents, as well as what the decision means for other hospitals in the region, notably Grady Memorial Hospital.
“This decision will have deep and reverberating consequences for the half a million residents of Atlanta and the hundreds of thousands of visitors and commuters to our city each day,” Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens wrote in a letter Wellstar Health System President and CEO Candice Saunders. “The City of Atlanta received no advance notice of this decision and had no opportunity to engage with you to understand or help mitigate the factors leading to this closure. I require immediate information about your company’s plans, what you are doing to mitigate the enormous health and economic impacts the closure will have on our community, plans for the multi-building campus once operations cease, and how you will be supporting the impacted personnel.”
AMC is one of only five Level I trauma centers in the state. Grady, just a couple miles away, is the only other Level I in the metro Atlanta area. It is also frequented by lower-income residents in south Atlanta, serving 50,000 indigent or charity patients in 2020, with more than 100 emergency room visits everyday. The closure will undoubtedly put an enormous amount of pressure on Grady, the other hospital in the city that has a particular focus on indigent or charity patients.
Wellstar pointed to the losses at the hospital, saying it lost $107 million last year. AMC is also the second facility Wellstar has closed this year, following the closure of East Point’s Atlanta Medical Center South. At the time, Wellstar CEO Saunders said the East Point facility closure would help patients access more complete services at AMC.
“Atlanta Medical Center is a critical element of Atlanta’s healthcare ecosystem. It serves some of Atlanta’s most vulnerable people and it is an essential back-up and overflow for Grady Hospital as the only other Level I trauma center in the metro area,” said Dickens. “With this decision, and the recent closure of Wellstar Atlanta Medical Center South, your company has now closed two hospitals that primarily serve low-income populations in the metro Atlanta community.”
A number of Democrats laid the blame for the closure on the decision of Gov. Brian Kemp to not support a Medicaid expansion, with Stacey Abrams seeing an opening for her campaign to go on the offense against Kemp.
“When the Atlanta Medical Center shuts its doors, it will leave Georgia’s 10.8 million people with just four Level I trauma centers – and will leave all of north Georgia with only one,” said Abrams. “The announcement is the latest sign that Georgians in rural, urban or suburban areas are now facing a healthcare crisis of spiraling costs and declining access under Kemp.”
For its part, Wellstar said that a Medicaid expansion would not have made a difference in its decision to close AMC.
