CLARKE COUNTY, Ala. (WALA) – FOX10 News continues to follow The fate of Thomasville Regional Medical Center A rural hospital in Clarke County.

In September, TRMC closed its doors. We are talking about personnel shortage. Hospital staff say payment was not made on time and it was said They may not receive payment the following week either.. Many employees have made the difficult decision to leave.

Where once there had been the beeping of machines and the chatter of doctors and nurses, it was eerily quiet.

“It’s almost apocalyptic in nature,” Thomasville Mayor Sheldon Allison Day said. “You walk in and wonder: ‘Wow, did this euphoria happen and leave us behind?’”

Mayor Day said the hospital’s demise actually began at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, when TRMC was one of three hospitals nationwide that did not receive federal COVID relief funding.

“(Congress) created a formula to distribute these funds, and when they created it, they crafted it so that the most important piece was calculating your losses. You had to use historical 2019 figures. We weren’t open in 2019, so we were like a square peg in a round hole,” Mayor Day explained.

Mayor Day says hospital owners borrowed money And I dug an even deeper hole.

But he says there is light at the end of the tunnel. Recently, a judge appointed a trustee named Kevin Smoker to take control of TRMC’s assets.

This week, hospital workers said they received an email promising they would get the money they were waiting for.

“They were able to collect some of the funds that were outstanding payments to the hospital from various insurance providers and others so that they were able to raise enough money to help pay the outstanding payroll to the employees,” Mayor Day explained.

One employee told FOX10 News he was relieved to see the money he had been anxiously awaiting.

“I was very impressed with the recipient’s email,” he said. “He seemed to really care about the facility and the staff…it’s time we had someone like that.”

Mayor Day said TRMC’s closure is just part of the ongoing health crisis in Alabama.

“There are a number of hospitals that are potentially considering closing; there are several other hospitals in our region that are struggling with great challenges,” he added. “Because of the issues that are happening here in Thomasville, we have started a conversation at the state level with everyone from the governor’s office, state legislators and other officials about what we can do long term to solve the problem in Alabama.”

Currently, the buyer and his team are cleaning and organizing TRMC’s facilities and 40-acre campus to market the hospital to potential buyers.

“We have a lot of capacity here, plus there’s a 40-acre campus, so there are opportunities not only for the hospital but other clinical functions like long-term acute care, assisted living,” added Mayor Day.

The mayor said numerous healthcare providers from inside and outside Alabama have inquired about TRMC, and some have even visited the hospital campus.

Mayor Day adds that about 70 to 75 percent of current employees at the hospital are interested in returning, while others are hesitant.

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