Waco has several health-care facilities, but what about the rural communities within the Heart of Texas?

A well-connected network of small hospitals and clinics serve the heavily populated Central Texas. Nonprofit community hospitals in Falls, Hill and Limestone counties provide residents with access to quality care. In Freestone County, East Texas Medical Center Fairfield recently upgraded its technology with new digital mammography equipment.

"ETMC Fairfield has been the sole community hospital in Freestone County since the 1940s, and today serves a population of 26,000 area residents," says Ruth "Raz" Cook, ETMC Fairfield administrator. "Our emergency department has gone from 300 visits a month to 750 over the last decade, so we've been undergoing a $15 million expansion to double the size of the ER as well as add a physicians clinic that will ultimately be attached to the hospital. We also have plans to add a 10-bed unit for our inpatient wing."

ETMC has 100 employees and offers a Level IV trauma center as well as a nationally accredited cardiopulmonary rehabilitation center. It also oversees an ETMC First Physicians Cllinic Fairfield that is currently a quarter mile from the hospital.

Care in Clifton
The city of Clifton in Bosque County is home to Goodall-Witcher Hospital along with Clifton Medical Clinic. The two buildings are connected to each other on a campus about 35 miles north of Waco off Highway 6.

“We provide patients with small-town care and top-notch technology,” says Jaime Ellithorpe, public relations and marketing manager with Goodall-Witcher Healthcare Foundation. “Besides the hospital and clinic, our foundation also oversees a nursing home, fitness center and a home health agency.”

The hospital and clinic offer services such as digital mammography, a sleep lab, general surgery, baby delivery and a cardiac rehabilitation unit.

“Before patients had to travel to Waco hospitals just to walk on a treadmill to strengthen their hearts following surgery, but we can save patients that 70-mile round trip two or three times a week,” Ellithorpe says. “In fact, patients can come to us if they’ve had several different kinds of operations in Waco, then we can provide rehabilitation and many other services.”