{"id":2458,"date":"2026-05-22T09:41:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-22T09:41:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usglobalnews.com\/2026\/05\/22\/well-never-know-if-he-could-have-been-saved-the-gaps-in-trumps-rural-health-fund\/"},"modified":"2026-05-22T09:41:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-22T09:41:10","slug":"well-never-know-if-he-could-have-been-saved-the-gaps-in-trumps-rural-health-fund","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.usglobalnews.com\/?p=2458","title":{"rendered":"‘We’ll never know if he could have been saved.’ The gaps in Trump’s rural health fund"},"content":{"rendered":"
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‘We’ll never know if he could have been saved.’ The gaps in Trump’s rural health fund<\/h1>\n<\/div>\n

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From <\/b>\"KFF<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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By\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\n Sarah Jane Tribble
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\"Debra<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\n Debra Pierce holds up a picture of Stanley Sears, her brother, while standing in the yard of the mobile home he was renovating before his death in 2024. Pierce believes North Carolina’s Martin County needs higher-level emergency services and a hospital.
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\n Sarah Jane Tribble\/KFF Health News
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WILLIAMSTON, N.C. \u2014 Two years after her brother’s death, Debra Pierce still wonders whether the 50-year-old would have survived his heart attack if her local hospital hadn’t closed.<\/p>\n

“The sad thing is we’ll never know if he could have been saved that night or not, because we don’t have a higher level of care in this county,” Pierce said as she stood outside the mobile home where she last hugged her brother.<\/p>\n

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Health <\/a><\/h3>\n

Dr. Oz pushes AI avatars as a fix for rural health care. Not so fast, critics say<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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Emergency crews from a neighboring town worked on Stanley Sears for a half hour but couldn’t revive him for the long drive to the closest hospital, records show.<\/p>\n

In the tall grass \u2014 which would be mowed if Sears were still alive \u2014 Pierce swiped through the photos on her phone. She stopped at a picture that showed Sears smiling. Pierce chuckled and then sighed: “Bless him.”<\/p>\n

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\"Stanley<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\n Stanley Sears and sister Debra Pierce at a Walmart. Sears died after a heart attack in North Carolina’s Martin County the year after the 2023 closure of Martin General Hospital. (Stanley Sears)
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\n Stanley Sears
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Closed for years<\/h3>\n

The local hospital had closed a year before Sears’ death, leaving behind a gutted healthcare system. Martin County does not have paramedics on its ambulances, and it can be 20 miles or more to the closest \u2014 and often overcrowded \u2014 emergency rooms.<\/p>\n

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Shots – Health News <\/a><\/h3>\n

A mobile clinic parked at a Dollar General? It says a lot about rural health care<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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The healthcare gaps in Martin County illustrate the finite reach of a $50 billion rural health fund that Republicans crafted to strengthen support for President Donald Trump’s signature tax and spending measure, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, last year. Though the cash has not been doled out, Republican candidates in competitive midterm elections \u2014 including the closely watched battle for the congressional district that encompasses Martin County \u2014 are casting the fund as a lifeline that will shore up critical rural health services across America.<\/p>\n

The money has been highly anticipated in North Carolina, where most residents live in rural counties. Pierce, a Republican who blames county officials for the hospital closure, said she has faith Trump will help them. “Old man’s doing his job up in there,” she said.<\/p>\n

On paper, Martin County \u2014 home to about 22,000 people \u2014 looks like a top contender to receive at least some of the $213 million that’s been earmarked for North Carolina.<\/p>\n

Yet County Manager Drew Batts said it won’t be the answer for his residents.<\/p>\n

“The $50 billion is not something that is specifically going to help our situation,” Batts said as he walked into the shuttered hospital in April. “It’s not going to help us get this place reopened.”<\/p>\n

Martin County won’t get direct relief from Trump’s rural health fund \u2014 because its hospital isn’t open. North Carolina is distributing the money among existing health and social service organizations. Plus, federal regulators set limits<\/a> on how much can be spent on construction and building renovations.<\/p>\n

‘We can only pray’<\/h3>\n

Martin General Hospital closed abruptly in 2023, surprising employees and shocking patients, who had to be wheeled out on stretchers and transported elsewhere to finish treatment. The closure even stunned local elected leaders, who say the company operating the county-owned hospital, Quorum Health, did not notify them it intended to shut down operations and file for bankruptcy. Quorum spokesperson Lisa Anderson said the company had told county commissioners of the hospital’s ongoing financial challenges.<\/p>\n

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\n A weathered sign hangs across the drive to the shuttered Martin General Hospital in Williamston, North Carolina. The hospital, the only one in Martin County, closed abruptly in August 2023.
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Politicians have spent the years since trying to reopen the hospital, with county taxpayers pouring an estimated $2.9 million into maintenance, utilities, and other costs in the hopes of resuming operations, Batts said.<\/p>\n

The county is now considering spending at least $1.5 million, he said, to create two higher-level paramedic units with quick-response vehicles, specially equipped with electrocardiogram equipment or other “advanced lifesaving support.”<\/p>\n

Pierce said she is praying the county can add paramedics and reopen the hospital.<\/p>\n

“There’s some answered prayers happening every day,” she said. “So, we can only pray and hope, you know?”<\/p>\n

‘They just want to not die’<\/h3>\n

With its nine hospitals, the region’s largest health system is ECU Health, connected to East Carolina University. The system has become a de facto safety net for 29 counties. Batts and Brian Floyd, the Greenville-based system’s chief operating officer, have lobbied state and federal lawmakers, walking them through the shuttered hospital and asking for help.<\/p>\n

“It’s a real healthcare crisis that has already proven itself to have lost lives that perhaps didn’t have to be lost,” Floyd said. “They just want to not die because there’s nowhere to go when you have an emergency.”<\/p>\n

Eleisa Ann Evans drove 2\u00bd hours from a small town near the Outer Banks on a recent evening so her aunt could get care at an ECU Health ER in Greenville. Once there, Evans said, staff told her to leave her 79-year-old aunt in the waiting room and wait outside because of capacity issues.<\/p>\n

Evans said she was outraged at the way the staff treated her. She said she had been standing behind her aunt’s wheelchair while inside and “wasn’t using nobody’s chair.”<\/p>\n

With Martin General gone, all the surrounding counties are “also in jeopardy,” Floyd said. “No one knows what to do” with that large of a healthcare “desert,” he said.<\/p>\n

What healthcare is left in the county includes one urgent care center, run by a private company, and a nonprofit health clinic, operated by Agape Health Services, which accepts patients from five counties and plans to build another primary care clinic to meet demand.<\/p>\n

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\n A “Capacity Notice” sign outside the ECU Health Medical Center emergency room in Greenville, North Carolina, warns that anyone who is not a patient must wait outside. The hospital is the state’s only Level 1 trauma center east of Raleigh, and its emergency department reports some of the longest wait and treatment times in the country.
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ECU Health signed a letter of intent last year<\/a> to reopen Martin General as a rural emergency hospital that would provide outpatient care as well as an ER. Under the terms of the deal, Martin County would pay to refurbish the hospital, and the North Carolina General Assembly would have to give ECU Health $210 million, of which $150 million would pay for the construction of a new inpatient tower at ECU’s Beaufort Hospital<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The health system, through its affiliate Access East<\/a>, won a portion of North Carolina’s $213 million first-year payout from the rural fund. But the federal money can’t be used to reopen Martin General, Floyd said.<\/p>\n

The five-year Rural Health Transformation Program is slated to be delivered in $10 billion annual increments to states, which applied and competed for the money.<\/p>\n

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Health <\/a><\/h3>\n

Here’s what to know about the $50 billion states are getting for rural health<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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North Carolina’s plan creates a hub-and-spoke model<\/a> that allots money to six large regional leads, including nonprofits such as Access East. Those hubs will distribute money to local entities and coordinate broad initiatives such as improving primary care and fortifying the healthcare workforce, as well as developing “digital solutions,” according to the state’s hub application<\/a>.<\/p>\n

An election issue<\/h3>\n

The lack of emergency care in the region has emerged as a top talking point in a close U.S. House race between Rep. Don Davis, a Democrat who represented the district when Martin General closed and is seeking his third term, and Republican Laurie Buckhout.<\/p>\n

The rural health fund was added at the last minute in 2025 to win votes for the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which will reduce federal Medicaid spending by more than $900 billion over a decade \u2014 cuts that are projected to hit rural hospitals and clinics especially hard. Rural health executives say the fund won’t come close to offsetting those losses.<\/p>\n

Matt Mercer, a spokesperson for the North Carolina Republican Party, called the rural fund a “once in-a-generation opportunity” for the state.<\/p>\n

But U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis, who was one of three Republican senators to vote against the bill \u2014 and who announced shortly before the final vote that he plans to retire from Congress \u2014 warned of devastating consequences ahead for healthcare in his state.<\/p>\n

Buckhout, who declined an interview, plans to attack Davis \u2014 a vulnerable incumbent whose district was recently redrawn to favor GOP candidates \u2014 for voting against the bill.<\/p>\n

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\n A campaign billboard for Republican congressional candidate Laurie Buckhout sits along the highway between the now-closed Martin General Hospital and the closest emergency room, at ECU Health Bertie Hospital in Windsor, N.C.
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“Martin County lost its hospital on his watch, and he still opposed the funding meant to help communities like it,” Buckhout campaign spokesperson Stephen Gallagher said in a statement to KFF Health News. The campaign did not respond to additional queries about her plans for healthcare access, if elected.<\/p>\n

Davis, who signed a letter<\/a> from lawmakers in support of North Carolina’s rural health fund application, said the money “is essentially putting a band-aid on a much, much broader situation that needs dire help.” He has introduced legislation<\/a> that would increase Medicaid reimbursements for rural hospitals, though it has not moved forward.<\/p>\n

During recent testimony on Capitol Hill in Washington, ECU Health CEO Michael Waldrum said his system expects to lose a billion dollars over the next 10 years from the looming Medicaid cuts.<\/p>\n

Overnight waits for emergency care<\/h3>\n

The region’s emergency rooms offer a stark glimpse of a healthcare system in crisis.<\/p>\n

Martin General’s ER treated about 11,000 patients<\/a> annually before it closed, according to state data. A sign still hangs in the staff break room showing that 23 patients were seen in the ER the day it closed.<\/p>\n

ECU Health, which owns all but one of the rural hospitals around Martin General, reported a 132% increase in its daily ER visits since the hospital’s closure. The company’s nearly 1,000-bed hospital in Greenville, about 40 minutes from Williamston, is the state’s only Level 1 trauma center east of Raleigh.<\/p>\n

The Greenville hospital’s median patient ER wait and treatment time was nearly 4\u00bd hours, according to the most recent federal data<\/a>. That’s longer than 96% of thousands of hospitals reporting nationwide. The wait times “don’t reflect poor care,” ECU Health spokesperson Brian Wudkwych said in an emailed statement. He said the system’s ERs treat nearly 300,000 patients annually.<\/p>\n

While the system has seen an increase in Martin County patients, the wait times primarily stem from shortages of inpatient and behavioral health beds, Wudkwych said.<\/p>\n

Floyd, the ECU Health chief operating officer, said many rural patients who arrive at the system’s ERs have multiple chronic conditions that require longer visits. Often doctors start treating one problem and then find the patient’s “blood sugar is out of control, your hypertension is far out of control,” he said.<\/p>\n

ECU staff encourage people who are not too sick to skip Greenville and, instead, seek care at one of the system’s community hospitals, which aren’t as busy, Floyd said.<\/p>\n

A security officer guarded the Greenville emergency department’s doors on two nights in April. The “capacity notice” sign near the entrance meant family members of patients had to wait in cars or on benches outside.<\/p>\n

“We’ve only been here six hours,” Tonya Miles said after bringing her mother for a potential blood clot in her leg. The family had left the day before after waiting for two hours, because her mom “wasn’t prepared” for such a delay in treatment, Miles said.<\/p>\n

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\n Tonya Miles (right) sits with family outside ECU Health Medical Center in Greenville, North Carolina. Miles said they had “only been here six hours” after bringing her mother to the emergency room for a potential blood clot in her leg.
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On another evening, Olivia Lewis said she had brought her mother two nights previously and left without care after their wait stretched from 10:30 p.m. to 7 a.m.<\/p>\n

“She tore off her hospital bracelet and said: ‘I’m out. I’m done,'” she said. Now, they were back.<\/p>\n

On a recent Friday in Martin County, Vannessa Little was sitting at a McDonald’s with her kids just down the street from the closed hospital. Little pointed to one of her girls and wondered how her care would have been different if the hospital had been open.<\/p>\n

Her daughter, then 6, suffered severe burns over 30% of her body in 2024, and the journey to treatment was “just crazy,” Little said. An ambulance arrived at her Williamston home from neighboring Bertie County to transport them to ECU’s Greenville ER.<\/p>\n

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\n In Williamston, North Carolina, resident Vannessa Little says the “biggest thing we need” is a hospital.
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“That was a long time,” Little said of the 30-mile drive. The girl was ultimately airlifted more than 100 miles to Chapel Hill. Little said she hadn’t heard of Trump’s rural health investment. “The only changes that people are making is they’re taking away everything.”<\/p>\n

She voted against Trump in 2024 and said she didn’t think she would vote this year.<\/p>\n

“It’s a waste of my time.”<\/p>\n

KFF Health News<\/em><\/a> is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at<\/em> KFF<\/em><\/a> \u2014 the independent source for health policy research, polling, and journalism.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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