Quitman County hospital opens after area goes 5 years without medical provider

QUITMAN COUNTY, Miss. (WMC) - For five years, a rural Mississippi county has been without a hospital, but now a new facility is bridging the great health divide in Quitman County.

Friday morning, the ribbon was cut at the new Quitman Community Hospital in Marks.

This is the first medical provider in the county since 2016. Congressman Bennie Thompson, who attended the ribbon-cutting, says any community without a hospital is in trouble.

“Quitman County is what you call medically underserved. That means that our children die quicker than any other area. That means our seniors die faster. You’ve now started the process of addressing that problem,” Thompson said.

The hospital will be a fully functional medical-surgical hospital with a 24-hour emergency department. Leaders say with more funding in the future, the hope is to increase the number of beds from seven to 20.

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