Editor’s note: The original December 2018 version of this article was lost. The Lee Daily Register rebuilt it in October 2026 from the reporting cited below, and added what happened in the weeks that followed.
Employees at the hospital in Pineville, Kentucky, are still waiting on paychecks that were due last Friday, at a hospital owned by Americore Health, the company that has promised to reopen Lee County’s hospital by Dec. 31.
Workers at Southeastern Kentucky Medical Center told WYMT on Dec. 27 that their checks were six days late. Administrator Kevin Couch blamed a $200,000 shortfall caused by a Medicare error, one Couch said was on Medicare’s end. Couch said the hospital expected to hand out checks by the end of the week.
For some families, the timing was the hardest part. One employee, Mary Davis, told the station: “We have had to cancel Christmas with our family.”
Not the first missed payday
Pay at the Pineville hospital had already run late several times this year, the Harlan Enterprise reported on Dec. 6. The same report said Pineville Community Hospital Associates, which still owns the hospital’s real estate, filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy on Nov. 29 in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky, and that Pineville Mayor Scott Madon told the city council the hospital owed the city well over $200,000 in occupational taxes.
Americore’s hospital in Ellwood City, Pennsylvania, has the same problem this month. Workers there were still waiting on paychecks due Dec. 21, a delay that ran to three weeks, according to later reporting carried by WRIL.
The Lee County deadline
Americore bought Lee County’s shuttered hospital building in Pennington Gap from the Lee County Hospital Authority for $1.6 million in 2017, with plans to reopen it. Its state certificate of public need to run the hospital expires Dec. 31. Work on the building stopped in September after creditors sued Americore in New York, according to reporting by Luanne Rife for The Roanoke Times.
What happened next
The Pineville checks did go out: in an update on Dec. 28, administrators told WYMT they had received funding and started distributing them. But on Jan. 7, 2019, WYMT reported that the next paycheck was late too. Couch, identified that time as the hospital’s controller, said the December problem stemmed from the change in ownership and had been resolved with CGS, a Medicare billing contractor.
Americore missed the Dec. 31 deadline in Lee County. A vendor had removed equipment from the building in December over nonpayment, and on Jan. 10, 2019, the hospital authority’s board ratified a default against the company. In April 2019, the City of Pineville sued Americore and its president, Grant White, over unpaid occupational taxes, WRIL reported. On Jan. 2, 2020, The Roanoke Times reported that Americore and its hospitals had sought Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in a Kentucky court that week.
Lee County’s hospital reopened in 2021 with Ballad Health, under a limited-service model. The Lee Daily Register’s recent coverage looks at where it stands today.
