Non-urban hospitals are vital to keeping quality health care close to home. We understand the specific needs of hometown hospitals--and we work with the community to create a partnership that maintains local involvement while providing the necessary resources to expand services, recruit physicians and enhance technology. Many independent hospitals are finding it beneficial to partner with CHS for economies of scale, volume purchasing agreements, management expertise and better access to capital. Every CHS hospital operates with a local governing board. Each community served by CHS is different. Through a collaborative effort between the community and CHS, we help hometown hospitals achieve or maintain their position as the dominant health care provider of choice in their marketplaces.
The acquisition of Hallmark Healthcare nearly doubles the size of Community Health.
E. Thomas Chaney announces his intention to resign as chief executive officer.
Wayne T. Smith is named president and chief executive officer of Community Health.
Community Health Systems, Inc. is the largest non-urban provider of healthcare services in the United States, operating more hospitals than any competitor. Community Health owns or leases more than 70 hospitals in a 22-state territory, operating nearly 8,000 licensed beds. In approximately 85 percent of its markets, the company is the sole provider of general hospital services. Community Health acquires rural hospitals that typically operate on a nonprofit basis and are struggling financially. The company invests in its acquired hospitals, expanding services and improving managerial controls to produce profitable hospitals.
Community Health grew in fits and starts during its first decade, a decade in which two of its founders, Richard Ragsdales and E. Thomas Chaney, assumed an active role in running the company. The company they helped found in 1985 grew to be the biggest of its kind, but much of the company's growth was achieved after they departed. Their business strategy was sound, however, forming a foundation that could be leveraged into creating the more than $3 billion-in-sales company that Community Health became 20 years after the pair acquired their first hospital.
When Community Health began operating in 1985, Ragsdales served as the company's chairman and Chaney served as its chief executive officer. The first hospital to come under their control was the Fannin Regional Hospital in Blue Ridge, Georgia. The hospital, acquired in January 1986, contained 34 licensed beds, the fewest number of beds acquired by the company during its first 20 years in business. The acquisition was followed by the purchase of two more hospitals, both acquired in September 1986. Community Health purchased the Highland Medical Center, a 123-bed hospital in Lubbock, Texas, and the Russell County Medical Center, a 78-bed hospital located in Lebanon, Virginia.
Community Health's first trio of hospitals provided a blueprint for expansion. The company set its sights on acute-care hospitals operating in rural communities, focusing on towns with populations ranging between 20,000 and 80,000. Suitable acquisition candidates generally were operated as nonprofit hospitals and typically were suffering from financial problems. Community Health, which operated as a publicly traded, for-profit, enterprise, served as a savior of sorts for troubled, rural hospitals, although the company, to be sure, was driven by the need to make money. For Ragsdales, Chaney, and their successors, Community Health's strategy allowed them to lay claim to pursuing both missions: serving the public good and focusing on generating profits.
According to U.S. Census Bureau figures, one-quarter of the country's population lived in rural communities during Community Health's formative decades. These communities were served by hospitals spread far apart, often making a particular community dependent on a single hospital for providing healthcare. Commu
