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A Rural Georgia Community Reels After Its Hospital Closes

December 10, 2021

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Lacandie Gipson struggled to breathe.

The 33-year-old woman with multiple health conditions was in respiratory distress and awaiting an ambulance. About 20 minutes after the emergency call, it arrived.

The Cuthbert home where Gipson lived was less than a mile from Southwest Georgia Regional Medical Center, but the ambulance couldn’t take her to the one-story brick hospital because it had closed three months earlier, in October 2020.

Instead, the EMTs loaded Gipson into the ambulance and drove her more than 25 miles to the hospital in Eufaula, Alabama, where she was pronounced dead.

Read More on Kaiser Health News