For the past 19 months, officials in rural Martin County have been working on an experimental plan to resurrect the community's shuttered hospital. Martin General, the 43-bed facility that for seven decades served generations of residents in the Eastern North Carolina county, closed its doors in August 2023. The hospital was later placed into bankruptcy, a move that operator Quorum Health attributed to "financial challenges related to declining population and utilization trends." Ownership of the hospital eventually reverted to the county, which had been leasing the building to Quorum.
