EAMC-Lanier is officially East Alabama-Lanier Rural Emergency Hospital. A ribbon-cutting at the Valley hospital was held on a chilly Thursday morning to celebrate the occasion with clinicians, staff and community members. 

It was announced in July that EAMC-Lanier would become a Rural Emergency Hospital (REH). This designation allows the hospital to keep emergency services without having inpatient services. EAMC-Lanier will be keeping all of its services except inpatient services which have been moved to the Opelika location. 

“I just appreciate what [EAMC] has done to keep this hospital open and changing it to a different type of hospital is what they’ve got to do to keep everything viable,” said Leonard Riley, Valley’s mayor. “This hospital is important to our community.”

Executive Vice President of EAMC-Lanier, Greg Nichols, reiterated the commitment of East Alabama Health to stay in Chambers County. 

“Even though we have changed and the designation now is a rural emergency hospital, it’s a different look for us, but it does mean that we’re still committed to this community,” he said. “We’re committed through the emergency department that serves so many people each day that have that urgent need close to home, we’re committed through the outpatient…We’re committed to serving our community through our nursing home.”

The staff over the inpatient services at Lanier have been transferred to the Opelika location. 

“No one lost a job. They’ve all been able to go down there and are working together down there as a unit. We opened up an additional floor down there,” Nichols said. 

The Hospital Administrator emphasized that the day-to-day of the hospital will see little change.

“If you’re sick enough to be in the hospital, you need a lot of the specialists that are in Opelika, so that’s a better place to have an inpatient,” Nichols said. “Having emergency care and outpatient services, having those locally, is still very important.”

Nicols said the REH designation means, “[EAMC-Lanier] no longer has to have the inpatient beds here, which our census was very low. And so it allows us then to focus and offer inpatient services at the main campus in Opelika, which is much more efficient.”

According to Nichols, before the transition, Lanier averaged around six inpatients.

The designation of Rural Emergency Hospital (REH) was created in the 2021 Consolidations Appropriation Act as a new Medicare provider. This was in response to closures and downsizing of rural healthcare services. 

An REH designation comes with financial incentives. Reimbursements for the losses of inpatient services are one. Most notably, they also receive a monthly facility payment which in 2024 is $276,233.58, according to the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Nichols ended by saying, “We’re still providing health care in the community. We’re still committed to this community.”

To learn more about the designation and how it affects EAMC-Lanier, you can read our in-depth article on the topic here.