Maury County Hospital opened its 100-bed facility on Dec. 16, 1953. Now, 70 years later, the health system is a health care leader in southern Middle Tennessee.
When it was first built, Maury Regional Medical Center — as it is now known — had 102 beds and encompassed 69,600 square feet.
The hospital was the vision of Dr. Charles D. Walton, a longtime local physician from Mt. Pleasant who was chief of staff at the privately owned King’s Daughters’ Hospital in Columbia in the late 1940s. He knew the growing community needed more patient beds available, and the newly introduced federal Hill-Burton Act, which provided grant funds for building and maintaining hospitals, was the pathway to building a new, modernized hospital.
Maury County magistrates unanimously voted in April 1951 to move ahead with plans for the hospital, and just over two years later, a dedication ceremony was held in the hospital’s lobby after rain forced the event inside.
The hospital started with three stories, 55 employees and 22 physicians but quickly grew, more than doubling its employee number and adding several more physicians in its first year. Maury Regional Health now has more than 3,000 employees and 200 physicians across southern Middle Tennessee, who serve a quickly growing region of more than a quarter of a million residents.
“Maury Regional Health has evolved to meet the needs of our community since its inception,” said CEO Martin Chaney, MD. “I am grateful to the leaders before me whose vision and determination changed the face of health care in our region. We have an exceptional medical staff, skilled nurses and clinicians, and a multi-disciplinary support team dedicated to providing clinically excellent compassionate care.”
Seeing more patients and hiring more staff has also made facility expansion necessary. Over the last seven decades, several expansions have taken the flagship hospital’s capacity from 102 beds to 255.
The first expansions took place in 1959 and 1966, adding the Booker Smiser and Walton wings, but it was in the 1970s when even bigger ideas of what the hospital could be started to blossom.
Ground was broken in 1975 for the first major expansion at the hospital, which was completed two years later. This four-story project included a new emergency room, laboratory, radiology and physical therapy spaces, cafeteria and medical records area, as well as a new nursing floor and coronary care unit, a new parking garage, a new separate power plant building and a new front entrance.
But the campus was far from done growing.
In the years since, the main hospital’s west wing has expanded to six stories and houses nationally accredited programs in heart care, stroke services, orthopedics, critical care, childbirth services and others. The campus also added the Medical Office Building in 1988 and followed with the Maury Regional Pavilion in 2003, in addition to parking and other facilities upgrades.
“As our community grew, and we became more of a regional referral center with more patients, we expanded and improved our patient care and support areas, recruited more physician specialists and added more office spaces,” said former CEO Bill Walter, who served in the role for 34 years. “With a strong organizational team, a strong, insightful and supportive Board of Trustees and a supportive Maury County Commission, we were able to provide excellent medical care for the present and a foundation for the future.”
Not only has Maury Regional Medical Center grown over the last 70 years, but the health system has also expanded to provide health care services to more individuals in southern Middle Tennessee.
In 1995, the hospital acquired Lewisburg Community Hospital (renamed Marshall Medical Center) and established a management agreement with Wayne Medical Center. The next year, it purchased Lewis Health Center in Hohenwald.
The health system didn’t wait long to announce another facility — in September of 1997, construction began on a primary care practice in Spring Hill to accommodate that rapidly growing population.
The organization now has Maury Regional Medical Group practice locations throughout southern Middle Tennessee where providers had more than 304,000 patient encounters in the last fiscal year alone.
And, beginning in 2024, Maury Regional Health looks to take its next steps toward the future, with a new multi-million facility improvement plan in motion to enhance patient care and experience.
“As more patients continue to choose Maury Regional Health for their care, the organization is recruiting physicians to support growing service lines, offering additional services and expanding our facilities to meet the changing needs of our community,” Dr. Chaney said.
While Maury Regional Health has constantly grown to provide more to its communities over the last 70 years, its focus has remained on providing clinical excellence and compassionate care to every patient that walks through its doors.