Bullock County Hospital to become rural emergency facility, lays off 95 employees

UNION SPRINGS, Ala. (WSFA) - Significant changes are coming to Bullock County Hospital to fit the community’s needs better.

Hospital CEO Amanda Trawick said it will change its focus from acute care to emergency medicine and other outpatient services like pulmonary function tests, nuclear stress tests, mammography and population health to keep patients from going to either Opelika or Montgomery.

The change comes with a major cut to the hospital’s psychiatric unit, which will close on April 30, resulting in 95 employees being laid off.

Trawick said keeping the unit while adding the additional services would have cost the hospital a loss of $200,000 per month, something they would not be able to sustain.

“That’s 30-plus beds that are also going to have to be found for other patients that we serve,” said Trawick. “It was a very hard decision, which is one of the reasons that we fought so hard to be a rural emergency hospital and have a free-standing psychiatric hospital.”

Trawick added the hospital will still accept psychiatric patients who would need a “23-hour evaluation” to ensure that they are stable or if they need to be transferred to a mental health unit close by.

The hospital CEO said she would consider adding back the psychiatric unit if the criteria for a rural emergency hospital would allow.

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