Editor’s note: The original April 2019 version of this article was lost. The Lee Daily Register rebuilt it in October 2026 from the public record cited below, and added a section on what happened afterward.
A South Carolina lender has gone to court to collect more than $5 million from Americore Health, the Florida company that owns the hospital in Ellwood City, Pennsylvania, and that Lee County partnered with in 2017 to reopen its own hospital in Pennington Gap.
Penn Med LLC filed the complaint on April 1 in the Lawrence County, Pennsylvania, court system, according to WRIL, which carried the Ellwood City Ledger’s reporting. The case names three companies: Americore Health LLC, Ellwood Medical Center LLC and Ellwood Medical Center Real Estate LLC. Grant White is listed as president of all three.
What the lender says it is owed
The loan was taken out after Americore bought the Ellwood City hospital in October 2017. The $4.5 million was due by September 2018, with options to extend the deadline to April 1, 2019, according to the same report. The judgment Penn Med is seeking adds up as follows:
- $4.5 million in principal
- a $500,000 bonus payment
- $226,080 in interest
- $4,000 in attorney fees
That totals $5,230,080. The loan agreement lets the lender take the medical center itself toward repayment, and the report put the repayment deadline at April 30. White signed a confession of judgment, which leaves limited room to fight it, the report said.
White’s response, sent by email on April 10, was brief: “The issue has been resolved amicably.” White gave no details.
A pattern of unpaid bills
The lawsuit is not the hospital’s only money problem. Ellwood City Mayor Anthony Court said the hospital had not paid its bill to the borough-run electric department since December, leaving about $125,000 outstanding. The mayor said it was understood that the hospital had 30 days to pay the lender or be padlocked, according to WRIL’s account.
Workers there have reported at least 15 delayed or disrupted payrolls since August, including a three-week wait for paychecks due Dec. 21, the report said. The Lawrence County district attorney’s office is conducting a criminal investigation into the hospital’s finances.
Why it matters in Lee County
Americore was the company the Lee County Hospital Authority picked to reopen the hospital Wellmont Health System closed in Pennington Gap in 2013. The authority sold the building to Americore for $1.6 million in 2017 and did not require payments for three years, according to reporting by Luanne Rife for The Roanoke Times. Work stopped in September 2018, Americore missed a Dec. 31 reopening deadline, and on Jan. 10, 2019, the authority’s board ratified a default against the company.
What happened next
At an Ellwood City Council hearing the following Monday, the only speaker was Benjamin Steinberg, an attorney for Penn Med. Steinberg opposed a proposed hospital zoning district as an unconstitutional taking, and said Penn Med had not yet acted on its judgments and did not plan to foreclose but wanted to be repaid, EllwoodCity.org reported. In August 2019, council amended the zoning ordinance, a step the borough solicitor said would resolve an appeal Penn Med had filed, according to the same site.
The hospital did not survive the year. Pennsylvania’s health department shut down its emergency room and inpatient services on Nov. 27, 2019, and Americore temporarily closed the medical center on Dec. 10. 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 took a different path. After cutting ties with Americore, the hospital authority partnered with Ballad Health, which opened an urgent care center in October 2019. The hospital reopened in 2021 under a limited-service model, according to a report by the Joint Commission on Health Care. The Lee Daily Register’s recent coverage of the hospital looks at where it stands now.
