Construction of Memorial Health System’s new women’s and children’s hospital in Belpre is on hold while Ohio waits for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to greenlight a rural hospital funding program, The Columbus Dispatch reported Oct. 28. The Marietta-based health system broke ground on the hospital in 2024 and had first expected to finish it in late 2026, but as of Oct. 28 hundreds of millions of dollars for rural hospitals statewide had yet to be distributed, including an expected $36 million for Memorial, according to The Dispatch.
For families in Washington County, the delay has a daily cost in travel. The Dispatch told the story of Washington County Commissioner Charlie Schilling and his wife, who drive more than two hours from their home in Beverly for specialty pediatric care for their youngest children, Briar, 12, and Benjamin, 9 — a four-hour round trip to Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus or Akron Children’s Hospital. The Belpre hospital would be 35 minutes from Beverly, cutting that travel by nearly three-fourths, The Dispatch reported. The project received $30 million in state funding, which The Dispatch described as unheard of for a nonprofit health system.
“We believe these [funds] to be essential… and without these rural tax pilot funds, I’m concerned about the future stability of our health system,” Scott Cantley, president and CEO of Memorial Health System, told The Columbus Dispatch. The health system recorded more than one million patient registrations in the last year, according to The Dispatch.
The money at issue is the Rural Ohio Hospital Tax Pilot Program, included in the most recent state budget, which would fund hospitals in Fayette, Greene, Highland, Hocking, Muskingum, Perry, Pike, Ross, Scioto and Washington counties through a county tax levy on hospitals, with dollars sent to CMS and reimbursed to hospitals 3 to 1, The Dispatch reported. A spokesperson for Gov. Mike DeWine told The Dispatch that the Ohio Department of Medicaid has provided the requested information and completed all required submissions, but the state is still waiting on CMS for final approval nearly a year and a half later. CMS did not respond to The Dispatch’s requests for comment before publication, according to The Dispatch.
The stakes extend beyond one building. The Dispatch reported that 44% of rural hospitals across the country were operating in the red in 2025, according to KFF Health News, and that a July report from the Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform warned at least six rural Ohio hospitals are in danger of closing. In Washington County, Memorial Health System employs five times more people than the county’s next biggest employer, and the women’s and children’s hospital is expected to add 200 more jobs, The Dispatch reported.
Muskingum County Commissioner Melissa Bell, a Republican, told The Dispatch she cannot imagine life in her county without Genesis Healthcare System, its largest employer at roughly 4,000 people. “These are our friends, the people that we our kids go to school with, the people we rely on to assist with all kinds of things, with community service outreach,” Bell told The Dispatch. “Not having that institution, I just can’t imagine our community without that.”
Ohio has received $92 million of the $202 million promised under the separate federal Rural Health Transformation Program, The Dispatch reported, and a similar hospital payment program was recently approved in Texas. For now, though, the Belpre site waits on a federal decision — and Washington County families keep making the long drive to Columbus and Akron for the specialty care the new hospital was built to bring home.
Photo: Tim Kiser, CC BY-SA