Tippah County Hospital, a critical access provider, badly needed a new building. Its aging, 69-year old facility was in dire need of replacement. The hospital used $25.5 million in NMTC financing from three CDEs, MuniStrategies, Three Rivers CDC, and Hope Enterprise Corporation, and a Capital One equity investment, to build a modern hospital facility on an adjacent plot of land.
The new hospital employs 192 people and ensures that emergency healthcare is available twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week in Tippah County and surrounding counties in rural North Mississippi.
Located in a medically underserved area, the new facility is dramatically improving the quality of care, patient outcomes, and emergency healthcare for the residents of Tippah County and nearby Benton County (which does not have a hospital). The hospital now provides routine outpatient testing to its patients, including the 250 nursing home residents it serves. The facility serves 14,937 patient visits annually, 50.8 percent of whom are low-income, and approximately 60 percent of services are paid by Medicare and Medicaid.
The project is located in a non-metro census tract in rural Mississippi with a poverty rate of 28.0 percent and an unemployment rate of 9.8 percent. The census tract is considered severely distressed by the Delta Regional Authority. It is also listed as “At Risk” in the Appalachian Regional Commission Service area. In addition to preserving 192 jobs in the community, the hospital created 9 new permanent jobs and 45 construction jobs.
The project was awarded the 2020 Qualified Low Income Community Investment of the year award from Novogradac & Company, LLP.