When Methodist Olive Branch Hospital opened its doors 10 years ago this month, hundreds of people turned out for an opening ceremony. 

“There were people that couldn’t even get here because the traffic was so bad,” remembered Ellen Parker, a registered nurse with Olive Branch location. 

It was a historic moment, after all. The need for a hospital in eastern DeSoto County — and Mississippi’s northwest region — was great, observers will say. Methodist Olive Branch Hospital’s arrival marked DeSoto County’s second-ever hospital, following Baptist Memorial Hospital-DeSoto’s opening in Southaven in the 1980s. 

Southaven’s ‘Operation: Close the Door’ will target traffic from Memphis

Today, Methodist Olive Branch leadership and community members attest to the hospital’s growth as a reflection of the surrounding area’s strides, as well as the demand for health care in North Mississippi. 

“In 2023, our volume is up 13% above prior years, so we anticipate an extra probably (25,000) 30,000 visits this year,” said David Baytos, who’s served as CEO of Methodist Olive Branch Hospital since its opening. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the facility was the only hospital in the region where inpatient admissions increased rather than dropping, Baytos noted. 

“People came here because they needed the acute care services that we provide here.”

In 2022, Methodist’s facilities in Olive Branch, including its imaging center and minor medical office, recorded more than 200,000 patient visits, approximately four times the number of patient visits during the hospital’s first full year. 

The five-story facility, now at 73 beds medical-surgical beds, employs about 500 employees, more than twice the personnel when it first opened.

Parker, a veteran Methodist employee, treated the hospital’s first-ever patient in 2013. Parker, who previously worked for Methodist University Hospital in Memphis, was drawn by the opportunity to be a part of a brand-new facility from the very beginning. 

“It was a huge decision for me to leave where I’d been for 17 years just come to somewhere that I had no idea what it was going to be like,” Parker said. “This facility was very needed in this community.”

Like Parker, security supervisor James Weatherspoon made the jump from Methodist University to Olive Branch when it opened. It doesn’t hurt that the hospital is only 10 minutes from Weatherspoon’s Olive Branch home, but it’s the personable leadership culture that’s kept him there, he said. 

An Olive Branch hospital was years in the making. In 1998, Methodist’s application for a certificate of need for an outlet in Olive Branch was denied, as Baytos explained. State guidelines determined there were enough beds in the area. It wasn’t until after the Mississippi State Department of Health updated its state health plan that DeSoto County met the criteria for a new 100-bed hospital.

Former Olive Branch Mayor Sam Rikard was among those who advocated for a new hospital in eastern DeSoto County. 

“We believed that, number one, that our people in this part of the county needed to be able to receive a higher level of their health care closer to home,” said Rikard, who served as mayor between 1997 and 2013. “My opinion was certainly it was going to be advantageous to my citizens to have a hospital that was five or 10 minutes away versus 30 minutes or 35 minutes away.”

Rikard, who now chairs the local hospital’s board of directors, estimates the emergency room will see anywhere between 44,000 and 45,000 patients this year, a testament to its necessity in the region, he said. “I think that in itself proves that there was a need for a hospital here.”

Nesbit resident Kevin McCandless, 66, is among the hospital’s patients who previously sought care in Memphis before switching to Methodist Olive Branch after its opening. As a DeSoto County resident, the Olive Branch location is convenient, McCandless said, but he also credits the hospital’s care in previous medical emergencies, including a 21-day ICU stay for COVID-19 in 2020. 

Southaven makes it illegal to camp in public spaces

Recently, McCandless went to the emergency room when he believed he was experiencing a heart attack. There, a cardiologist with Sutherland Cardiology Clinic, which operates a clinic at Methodist’s Germantown hospital, was able to meet him right away.

“I thought that was pretty impressive. Otherwise, I’d have to drive all the way up to Memphis to get that same reaction.”

A rippling footprint

Besides improving health care access, an Olive Branch hospital has benefitted the suburb’s residential growth, said Vickie DuPree, executive director of the Olive Branch Chamber of Commerce.

“A lot of residents that are moving to a new area, they want to find out is there good health care. Is there a hospital within reach if there’s an emergency,” said DuPree. “We’ve got Baptist (DeSoto in Southaven), but that’s on the other side of the county.”

The hospital’s been a draw for new businesses, too. According to DuPree, the hospital falls within one of the state’s Health Care Zones, which allows qualifying health care-related businesses within a five-mile radius of facilities like Methodist Olive Branch to receive certain tax incentives. 

“We had five to seven businesses that did locate in that five-mile radius after the hospital moved in,” DuPree said, such as medical technologies provider Teleflex.

Meeting the needs of the future

Methodist Olive Branch was purposely built with expansion in mind, Baytos said. It’s designed to expand up to 300 beds through additions to its current facilities. Areas for support services, such as lab and radiology and food services, were also constructed with an eye toward future growth. 

“If health care needs change, and we need other facilities, whether it be additional medical office buildings, outpatient surgery center, long-term care facility, it gives us flexibility,” Baytos said, referencing surrounding undeveloped land that Methodist owns. “We’re not locked in.”

The opening of Interstate 269 offered greater connectivity to neighboring Marshall and Tate counties, areas where Baytos says the hospital has seen significant increases in patients. 

Horn Lake cannabis dispensary initiative fizzles out — for now

As the population grows to the east and south of Olive Branch, the hospital will evaluate if there are additional physician needs in those areas. Baytos sees that growth as potentially being in the form of clinics, such as imaging services followed by lab services. 

“It’s growing, but I think as more and more health care is delivered on an outpatient basis, you know, that’s where I see our facilities growing on an outpatient basis in the surrounding communities.”

Paying off, paying it forward

At the time of its construction, Methodist Olive Branch was heralded for its investments in sustainable design, including a geothermal heating and cooling system and window treatments that help regulate temperatures. 

A geothermal system cost about $500,000 more than a traditional HVAC system, Baytos said, but the hospital was able to recoup those savings in energy costs in three years, about two years ahead of a projected five-year time frame.

“Each year we have $100, $150, $200,000 more dollars as inflation occurs that we can put back into health care and not into energy costs,” Baytos said.