The University of Mississippi Medical Center has acquired Canton-based Merit Health Madison and is preparing to move a pediatric clinic to Madison, continuing a trend of moving services to Jackson’s suburbs.
The 67-bed hospital, now called UMMC Madison, will provide a wide range of community hospital services, including emergency services, medical-surgical care, intensive care, cardiology, neurology, general surgery and radiology services. It also will serve as a training site for medical students, and it plans to offer OB-GYN care in the future.
“As Mississippi’s only academic medical center, we must continue to be focused on our three-part mission to educate the next generation of health care providers, conduct impactful research and deliver accessible high-quality health care,” Dr. LouAnn Woodward, UMMC’s vice chancellor of health affairs, said in a statement. “Every decision we make is rooted in our mission.”
The new facility will help address space constraints at the medical center’s main campus in Jackson by freeing up hospital beds, imaging services and operating areas, said Dr. Alan Jones, associate vice chancellor for health affairs.
UMMC physicians have performed surgeries and other procedures at the hospital in Madison since 2019. UMMC became the full owner of the hospital May 1 after purchasing it from Franklin, Tennessee-based Community Health Systems.
The Batson Kids Clinic, which offers pediatric primary care, will move to the former Mississippi Center for Advanced Medicine location in Madison. This space will allow the medical center to offer pediatric primary care and specialty services and resolve space issues that prevent the clinic from adding new providers, according to Institutions of Higher Learning board minutes.
A UMMC spokesperson did not respond to questions about the services that will be offered at the clinic or when it will begin accepting patients.
The Mississippi Center for Advanced Medicine, a pediatric subspecialty clinic, closed last year as a result of a settlement in a seven-year legal battle between the clinic and UMMC in a federal trade secrets lawsuit.
The changes come after the opening of UMMC’s Colony Park South clinic in Ridgeland in February. The clinic offers a range of specialty outpatient services, including surgical services. Another Ridgeland UMMC clinic, Colony Park North, will open in 2026.
The expansion of UMMC clinical services to Madison County has been criticized by state lawmakers and Jackson city leaders. The medical center does not need state approval to open new educational facilities. Critics say UMMC has used this exemption to locate facilities in wealthier, whiter neighborhoods outside Jackson while reducing services in the city.
UMMC did not respond to a request for comment about its movement of services to Madison County.
UMMC began removing clinical services this year from Jackson Medical Mall, which is in a majority-Black neighborhood with a high poverty rate. The medical center plans to reduce its square footage at the mall by about 75% in the next year.
The movement of health care services from Jackson to the suburbs is a “very troubling trend” that will make it more difficult for Jackson residents to access care, Democratic state Sen. John Horhn, who will become Jackson’s mayor July 1, previously told Mississippi Today.
Lawmakers sought to rein in UMMC’s expansion outside Jackson this year by passing a bill that would require the medical center to receive state approval before opening new educational medical facilities in areas other than the vicinity of its main campus and Jackson Medical Mall. Republican Gov. Tate Reeves vetoed the legislation, saying he opposed an unrelated provision in the bill.
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