2024 Eventful for Memorial Heath Meadows Hospital
The past year has been eventful for Memorial Health Meadows Hospital in Vidalia. The regional healthcare facility witnessed many changes in 2024, including the departures of two popular administrators: Chief Executive Officer Matt Hasbrouck and Chief Nursing Officer Jeffrey Harden.
When Hasbrouck joined Meadows Hospital in 2021, he was faced with multiple challenges. The formerly communityowned medical facility was just transitioning to a partnership with HCA, one of the world’s biggest health care networks, and COVID- 19 was peaking across the country.
How he handled being a new CEO in a transitioning regional hospital and how he guided his employees through the pandemic illustrated his approach to all that lay ahead in his administration: always put people first, whether they are patients, staff, or the community at-large.
The Hasbroucks are making their new home in Salt Lake City, Utah, where Hasbrouck is serving as Chief Executive Officer at St. Marks Hospital, the hospital where he first interned after graduating from college.
Jeffrey Harden, also a much-loved member of the MHMH team, left his position at Meadows to serve as CNO at the Doctors Hospital in Augusta, a 350-bed tertiary, full-service care center and the home of the Joseph M. Still Burn Center. JMS treats more than 3,000 patients annually and is nationally recognized as a leader in burn research and treatment. It is the biggest facility of its kind in the United States, and the third largest such facility in the world. Like Meadows, Doctors Hospital and JMS are HCA facilities. Harden had been with Meadows for eight years.
Also departing from MHMH in 2024 was general surgeon Kurt Hofmann, who retired after a 32-year career with 22 of those years spent at MHMH.
The year saw some additions to the Meadows staff as the facility welcomed Kristine (Kris) Cuthair as the new Chief Nursing Officer. Also, Board Certified Interventional Cardiologist Dr. Kendall M. Griffith joined the medical staff at Meadows. He is known for pioneering cardiac health care in his homeland in the Caribbean.
And 2024 was another year for accolades for Meadows. The hospital was recognized as a 2024 Outstanding Patient Experience Award recipient by Healthgrades, the leading resource consumers use to find a hospital or doctor. Meadows Hospital is one of only four hospitals in Georgia to earn this prestigious award and ranks in the top 15% of the nation’s medical facilities rated by Healthgrades for positive patient experience. It was the second year in a row that Meadows received the honor.
Also in 2024, Meadows was among 13 rural Georgia facilities to receive one of the 2024 Dual Track Rural Hospital Support Grants totaling $6 million announced June 18 by Governor Brian Kemp.
Administered through the Department of Community Health's (DCH) State Office of Rural Health (SORH), program awardees had the option of choosing between funding new or existing graduate medical education (GME) programs or direct hospital support through a single application process.
Graduate medical education funds are used to support existing or new GME programs that provide additional training for physicians who have completed medical school and are interested in learning more about a particular specialty of medicine. Direct hospital support funds can be used to increase access to healthcare, ensure adequate staffing, and to make financial and operational improvements. The selected hospitals were awarded between $250,000 and $1 million each to further strengthen access to quality care for Georgia’s rural communities.
Meadows received a $250,000 GME grant which was allocated to the hospital’s graduate medical education program. The funding allows recent medical school graduates to come to Meadows to learn the specialty of internal medicine.
