Field Memorial Community Hospital officials recently announced a decision to build a new main campus in Centreville and extend its services into Liberty with a new clinic.
“We’re in the design phase for replacing the hospital in Centreville,” Administrator Chad Netterville said. “We have a basic design plan and we have a preliminary budget.
“The old Williams-Carter Plant is the site for the new hospital. The property was owned by Amite and Wilkinson counties, and supervisors gave us the rights to that site in May 2011.”
Netterville said plans call for the hospital to move from the current location on Main Street to Highway 24 “within the next two years.”
Field Memorial, which was established 84 years ago, is operating in a 25-bed, 60-year-old building. It discharged 727 patients last year and had revenues of about $30 million.
Netterville declined to give other details on the expansion.
As for the Liberty clinic, the hospital plans to open a primary care facility on Highway 24 across from Industrial Park Road.
Netterville said the goal is to have the clinic in Liberty up and running “sometime in 2013.”
The new clinic will be staffed by Dr. Trinity McKenzie, a 1994 Amite School Center graduate.
“We are very excited about the opportunity of having a primary care clinic in Liberty,” Netterville said.
McKenzie said. “It’s been a life-long goal for me to practice medicine in my hometown.”
McKenzie said adding a clinic will fill a void.
“There’s a need for a stable physician in the area,” McKenzie said. “It will be beneficial for the people there. It will be great for me because I live there.”
The Amite County Board of Supervisors got the ball rolling on the project when they approved the site for the clinic in July.
Netterville said the new clinic is still in the design phase.
McKenzie is practicing at the hospital’s Gloster clinic. He has been with the hospital since 2007, right after he completed his residency in family medicine at North Mississippi Medical Center in Tupelo.
“Dr. McKenzie has always expressed a desire since he’s been here to practice medicine in his hometown,” Netterville said. “We’re trying to take advantage of that opportunity.”
McKenzie received his undergraduate degree from Millsaps College in 1999 and finished at University Medical Center in 2004.
Netterville said plans call for the new clinic to be open five a per week, eight hours a day.
The hospital also operates clinics in Centreville and Woodville.
“Our goal is to make primary care more accessible to the citizens of Amite County,” Netterville said.
In another matter, Netterville said Field Memorial has a new internal medicine physician in Dr. P. Kumar Selvaraj. He practices at the hospital’s Catchings Clinic in Woodville.
