Questions linger as Healthmark Regional emergency room in DeFuniak Springs remains closed

DeFUNIAK SPRINGS — A promised free medical clinic has yet to materialize and the emergency room at Healthmark Regional Medical Center remains shuttered with no change in its status in sight.

It has been 160 days since Healthmark Regional administrators closed the North Walton County emergency room for renovations that were to take two weeks to a month to complete.

Tim Turner, the Walton County Fire District's assistant chief for fire and EMS, met with hospital administrators Tuesday but came away with no clear picture of what progress was being made to reopen.

"They are still closed and didn't provide a timeline for reopening," Fire District spokeswoman Corey Dobridnia said.

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The state's Agency for Health Care Administration lists Healthmark Regional's licensure status as "in review." The AHCA did not order the emergency room's March 18 closure, a spokeswoman for the agency has said. State records show the hospital's licensure expired on March 6 and a new license was scheduled to become effective March 18.

The hospital can remain open and functioning while its licensure is in review, the ACHA said. Hospital spokesman Ron Kelley confirmed that an outpatient lab, respiratory testing and a walk-in clinic remain open at Healthmark Regional Medical Center.

But in July, hospital CEO Lisa Holley appeared before the Walton County Commission to announce the planned opening of a free clinic for residents of the DeFuniak Springs area who have been doing without local emergency care. Asked if that facility had been opened, Kelley responded "no." He did not elaborate.

At the commission meeting, Holley extended an invitation to county emergency officials to meet with her and her staff to discuss the hospital's status. She said she wanted to bring up issues that had not been disclosed publicly.

Holley told commissioners Healthmark Regional, a privately owned facility opened in 1999, had been forced to survive two years of COVID-19 impacts without the funding other hospitals received. She added the hospital has been further burdened by "doing a lot of repairs that we did not choose to do, but had to do unbudgeted."

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Holley did not discuss what repairs she was referring to or who or what had forced the hospital to undertake them.

Since the emergency room ceased operations, the number of out-of-county ambulance transports has jumped by 35%, and in the service zone that includes DeFuniak Springs, that number is 81%, according to statistics provided in July by Walton County Sheriff Michael Adkinson, whose office oversees North Walton emergency services.

Patients who would have been taken to Healthmark Regional are now going primarily to North Okaloosa Medical Center in Crestview, HCA Florida Twin Cities Hospital in Niceville or HCA Florida Fort Walton-Destin Hospital in Fort Walton Beach.

Adkinson said most patients taken to Okaloosa hospitals wind up at North Okaloosa Medical Center in Crestview.

The most surprising statistic for first responders, according to Adkinson, is the large number of people in the DeFuniak Springs area who are refusing ambulance transport that will take them out of the county. The number had increased in July by 60% overall, and in the zone including DeFuniak Springs by more than 120%.

"What we think this refusal rate means is that people are not going to the hospital because they don't have a ride home" from an out-of-county facility, Adkinson said. He said those most likely to access Healthmark Regional's services are "hyper-local" and in many cases from low-income families.

Bill Imfeld, the director of Walton County's Economic Development Alliance, said he has not had contact with Healthmark Regional administration, but driven by concerns expressed about the current status of emergency care in North Walton, has been reaching out, thus far unsuccessfully, to health care providers about locating a facility in the region.

He did note that Tallahassee Memorial Healthcare is scheduled to break ground on a Bay County facility this month. Its location on State Road 79 will be accessible from North Walton via State Road 20, which will give emergency crews a clear path to the hospital without accessing the perennially log-jammed U.S. 98.

Emergency care could be offered at the Bay County location as early as 2023, according to a media release.

This article originally appeared on Northwest Florida Daily News: Healthmark Regional emergency room in DeFuniak Springs still closed