The Maryland Health Care Commission has granted final approval for Peninsula Regional Health System to assume ownership of McCready Health, the Crisfield-based medical system that serves Somerset County.

McCready Hospital, the Tawes Nursing Home and Chesapeake Cove Assisted Living -- all located in Crisfield -- will officially join the health system March 1. 

“McCready Health has been a fixture and a health care safety net for the people of Crisfield and Somerset County for nearly a century by providing reliable, quality, community-focused healthcare,” said Steve Leonard, President and CEO of the Peninsula Regional Health System.

“We’re excited to be able to continue that 97-year tradition, and to work collectively with the team at McCready and the people of Crisfield on the opportunities this new health care model will present to allow us to continue to provide better, more efficient and more effective care for patients,” he said.

McCready Hospital will transition to a freestanding medical facility.

“The financial reality is that McCready does not maintain a daily census of patients sufficient to support the services required to qualify as a hospital as defined by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services,” said Kathleen Harrison of McCready Health.

“The path to keeping health care services in the county became clear: McCready needed to merge with an established and supportive partner like the Peninsula Regional Health System and transition to a (freestanding medical facility) in place.”

Services provided by McCready and Peninsula Regional staff at the FMF in place will include 24/7 emergency care, physical therapy, speech therapy, behavioral health services, outpatient physician services, imaging (CT scan and general x-ray) and laboratory services.  

Healthcare services currently offered at McCready Hospital that will be relocating prior to the March 1 transition to the FMF in place include all inpatient hospital care and surgical services, which will be managed at PRMC; mammography, which will transition to the Peninsula Breast Center; infusion therapy, which will move to home health or other outpatient infusion locations such as PRMC; bone density tests, which move to Peninsula Regional Endocrinology in Salisbury; and pulmonary function tests, which move to Peninsula Regional’s pulmonary function lab.

The FMF in place, at the site of the current McCready Hospital, will operate for a period of 24 to 36 months while PRHS constructs a new state-of-the-art McCready Health Pavilion on Route 413 just east of Crisfield.  Services offered at the FMF in place will all transition to the McCready Health Pavilion. Ground will be broken for the new pavilion within the next few months.

The Tawes Nursing Home and Chesapeake Cove Assisted Living facilities will remain open and operational, and will not relocate. 

“The McCready Health Pavilion will offer services above what has been extremely successful and well received at our other health pavilions in Ocean Pines and Millsboro,” said Leonard.  “This is complete and comprehensive healthcare, which best allows us to continue the McCready mission in Somerset County.”

All qualified staff at McCready who are affected by the change in structure are being considered for employment with the Peninsula Regional Health System at locations including PRMC, at the health system’s ambulatory and specialty care centers across Maryland and Delaware, Nanticoke Memorial Hospital and at the new McCready Health Pavilion.

On Jan. 1, PRHS completed a similar deal to take ownership of the Nanticoke Health System in Seaford and merged them into the health system.A branding study is under way that will create a new health system name for the company overseeing PRMC, McCready, Nanticoke Memorial Hospital and all associated services, physician and specialty practices.  That new name is expected to be announced this summer.