MOULTRIE — Colquitt Regional Health System CEO Jim Matney updated county commissioners on the hospital at last Tuesday’s meeting.

First, Matney presented an artist’s rendering of a new tower that, he said, will replace the hospital’s existing tower.

“So, the new tower, we’re breaking ground early 2026 and it will include an O.B. expansion with maternal infant health, surgical services and the second floor will be a 41-bed … We’ve been 99 but we’re licensed for 155. So, this will, actually, take us back to the 155 beds that we want to have,” he said. “This will allow us to double the size of surgery, double the size of O.B. … An interesting fact is that we used to do about 400 deliveries a year. Now we’re doing close to 800 deliveries a year.”

He added that the hospital sees about 30% migration into Colquitt County for surgeries and obstetrics. He also said the hospital was first in the region in O.B.

“Plans are, this fall, to come to you all to ask you for support …. with the millage rate backing it,” Matney said.

He gave year-in-review numbers that included 1,713 employees, 746 births, 5,277 surgeries and 38,298 ER visits.

“When I started coming to y’all years ago, we had 700 employees, so we’ve basically added a thousand over the years,” he said.

Matney said the biggest challenge the hospital has is workforce development. He said about 25% to 30% of their employees come from out-of-town.

“We have been successful at retaining our workforce and we’re excited about that. I looked at our openings in nursing and we’ve got 10 openings where a lot of hospitals around us are having hundreds of openings,” he said.

He said, over the last ten years, the hospital’s workforce has increased by 56%. They’ve given out more than $250,000 in scholarships, tuition reimbursement and student loan repayment, he said.

“To try to get people to go into the healthcare workforce,” he added.

Matney said the hospital continues to onboard a lot of new physicians to meet the needs of the hospital.

“We’re projecting that in the next 6 to 8 years, we will be adding 35 more physicians to our workforce and about 365 new employees, too,” he said.

He said the hospital has 100% board-certified emergency room physicians.

Matney said they were very proud of their graduate medical education program.

“This will be coming up on our fourth year for the psychiatry program,” he said and added that they had four new family medicine doctors.

He also said that they have had 22 people graduate and seven of them are now practicing in Moultrie. He said that 15 of them are practicing in the region.

“We currently have 11 residents,” he said.

He said they will add three more residents to the psychiatry class. This will give them a total of 12 in the program.

“Mental health is probably the number one issue in the State of Georgia and we feel like we’re meeting that need. …. And a lot of people don’t realize that you can come to our psychiatry residency clinic whether you have insurance or not,” Matney said. “Same thing with family medicine, too. We treat people regardless of their ability to pay.”

Working with Wellstar Kennesaw Medical College of Georgia, he said, the hospital has been accredited and started a new obstetrics residency.

“In the state of Georgia, there’s 51 “deserts,” so 51 counties that don’t have an O.B. in that county,” he said.

He said the hospital’s goal is to start a residency and, over the next several years, add four O.B. residents.

“They can’t all work in Moultrie, so hopefully, they’ll go out to other places to work in the region. That’s our goal,” Matney said.

He quoted a statistic that 85% of the residents will stay within 85 miles of where they trained. That was good for the region, he said.

He said they also have an Emory fellowship that started in 2023. They bring an Emory resident down to do general surgery. Matney mentioned that many local residency programs bring their residents to train at the Ameris Graduate Medical Education Center.

Matney said, although they’ve been called Colquitt Regional Medical Center for a long time, shortened to “CRMC,” they want to get away from the name. He said the reason was because there were other “CRMCs” like Coffee Regional Medical Center, Crisp Regional Medical Center and Capital Regional Medical Center.

“So we changed our overall name to Colquitt Regional Health System,” Matney said and added that it better represented what they have to offer.

However, he said, the hospital is still Colqiutt Regional Medical Center.

Under the Colquitt Regional Health System umbrella are the Sterling Physician Group and the Vereen Rehabilitation Center as well as Colquitt Regional Home Care, Georgia South Graduate Medical Education and Colquitt Regional Senior Care and Rehabilitation.

“We see our goal is not only providing good, compassionate healthcare but to also train kids that want to go into it,” Matney said.

He said the health system is starting an anesthesia assistants program, which is a physician assistant program that they are doing with PCOM. The students can do a 27-month program, then come out making about $230,000 a year. He added it was good for kids who wanted to go into sciences but didn’t want to attend medical school.

“I will tell you, we’re building this hospital not for us. …But we’re building it for the future of our kids so that we’ll have great healthcare,” Matney said. “Most counties our size don’t have adequate healthcare but that’s the one thing that we do. We have more than adequate healthcare.”