University of Missouri Health Care notified fellow owners NueHealth on Tuesday the organization is selling its minority interest (35 percent) in the Fulton Medical Center.
"MU Health Care formally notified NueHealth of our intent to sell our minority interest back to Fulton Medical Center," Mary Jenkins, public relations manager for University of Missouri Health Care, said. "When MU Health Care and NueHealth purchased the Fulton Medical Center in 2014, we reached an operating agreement, and that operating agreement provides we can sell (our interest) back to FMC."
NueHealth operates out of Leawood, Kansas, and did not immediately respond for comment.
MU Health Care invested approximately $1.6 million in the medical center, which changed its name from Callaway Community Hospital to Fulton Medical Center in April 2015. MU was to operate the hospital, which was serving more than 15,000 outpatients a year, according to a news release at the time of the 2014 sale.
Jenkins said she has no information about who employs the physicians and staff at the Fulton hospital or whether any of them would be leaving.
"I'm not aware of the exact structure," she said.
Jenkins said MU Health Care officials are disappointed these steps need to be taken.
"This has really been a difficult situation," she said. "We're disappointed we couldn't make FMC sustainable with NueHealth but the hospital has continued to lose money."
Across Hospital Drive from the Fulton hospital, MU Health Care operates an outpatient family medical clinic, which will continue to serve area patients.
"We've had a presence in Fulton for 40 years," Jenkins said.
Losing hospitals in Missouri isn't common, but it's not rare either.
"We've had a couple close in the last couple of years," said Dave Dillon, vice president of public and media relations for the Missouri Hospital Association. "Each one had its own set of circumstances, so it's hard to do apples-to-apples when making a comparison about why hospitals close."
Dillon said there are only a few hospital (taxing) districts in the state. Affiliated hospitals are more common.
"The hospital in Mexico recently affiliated with SSM Health," a system operating in Illinois, Oklahoma, Wisconsin and Missouri, he said. "Rural hospitals have an interesting set of challenges."
While Callaway County is surrounded by hospitals, people living in other regions of Missouri find hospitals a bit of a drive.
"It's good to have those kinds of resources close to home," Dillon said. "Maybe in the future there will be a different kind of model that doesn't exist in any meaningful way now."
Fulton Medical Center officials did not immediately return calls for information.