HHI residents know the prescription for helping Hilton Head Hospital’s new owners succeed | Opinion
Many people think this is just what the doctor ordered.
On Thursday, Hilton Head Hospital came full circle from its opening 49 years ago. Once again, it is a nonprofit hospital.
Novant Health, based in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, bought the hospital from Tenet Hospitals. The $2.4 billion deal also included Coastal Carolina Hospital in Hardeeville and East Cooper Medical Center in Mount Pleasant, as well as their affiliated operations.
Based in Dallas, Tenet is one of America’s largest healthcare providers, operating 61 hospitals, 110 outpatient facilities, a physicians network in the United States and a global business center in the Philippines. The company’s revenue topped $19 billion in 2022, the Dallas Morning News reported.
Novant Health’s website says it is a not-for-profit integrated system of 16 medical centers and more than 1,900 physicians in over 800 locations, as well as numerous outpatient surgery centers, medical plazas, rehabilitation programs, diagnostic imaging centers and community health outreach programs.
“Nonprofit” has a welcome ring to it. It sounds like patient and community interest has a bigger place at the table than quarterly earnings.
That is the island hospital’s heritage. Hilton Head Hospital was of, by and for the community when the late Dr. Peter LaMotte and attorney Bill Bethea led the long slog to open a hospital in 1975 in a community not large enough yet to keep it off life-support. But those who were here supported it with all their might.
Retired U.S. Army Gen. Donald Bennett, a four-star and a hero from D-Day, was on a tractor bush-hogging the site within a week of moving to his Shangri-La.
Dr. LaMotte was chief of orthopedic surgery at Roosevelt Hospital in New York City, and team physician for the New York Mets, when he turned his attention here. His dad, Louis “Red” LaMotte Jr., helped make IBM one of America’s greatest success stories.
But to appreciate the nonprofit’s value to the community, think instead of someone whose name was not in lights, except when she was the first islander to spot a painted bunting in the spring of 1976, and then the time she saw a pink sea gull.
Kiftie Stephens was there the night Dr. LaMotte outlined his dream to 17 women who formed the Hospital Auxiliary a year before there was a hospital. Dorothy Hatch was president and Kiftie was vice president.
Kiftie’s 12,000 hours of volunteer work over the next three decades shaped a bright future for Hilton Head Island. (Kiftie died in 2012 at age 97.)
The nonprofit hospital gave an island rapidly filling with newcomers a unified focus — something everyone could pull for, with the Hospital Ball, the Hospital Bazaar and the Dr. Al E. Gator Open charity golf tournaments. They keep the dream alive by raising hundreds of thousands of dollars in drives with names like Project Lifeline.
Millie Timmerman volunteered 17,000 hours at the hospital, mostly putting warm blankets on patients in the emergency room and comforting families. “I just hope I leave the world a better place than when I got here,” she said. (Millie died in 2021 at age 104.)
Volunteers pushed for an Obstetrics unit to be added to the hospital in the 1980s. Islanders Stan and Margie Smith raised money for it with an exhibition tennis match. It was a long time coming, but that OB unit last year brought 1,000 little islanders into the world.
When the hospital was sold to for-profits in 1994, the community was rewarded for all its hard work. The Community Foundation of the Lowcountry was established with $20 million in proceeds. Today it manages more than $86 million and has awarded grants and scholarships in this community totaling $105 million.
That is what we call a godsend — and just what the doctor ordered. If the new nonprofit in town is to deliver what this community hopes to have and should have, we know from experience that Novant Health cannot do it alone.
The doctor is ordering us all to get busy.
David Lauderdale may be reached at LauderdaleColumn@gmail.com .
