Alamance Regional Medical Center celebrated its 25th anniversary this week with the Alamance Regional Charitable Foundation hosting a fundraising event.
The event, held virtually through Facebook due to the COVID-19 crisis, was one arm of the foundations’ goal to raise $75,000 to help patients, employees and the community. As of midday Friday, $118,500 had been raised, with $108,074 of that raised by 25 community member “champions” who volunteered their time to fundraise ahead of the anniversary.
"While the pandemic has prevented us from fundraising in our traditional ways, the need among those we serve continues to grow," says Katie Boon, Alamance Regional Charitable Foundation director. "Since caring is at heart of what Alamance Regional stands for, we thought the anniversary was the perfect occasion to join in the spirit of helping others."
Thursday night’s festivities included a raffle to win 25 ounces of silver and a silent auction with a range of items from local businesses like gift cards and jewelry.
According to a release from Cone Health, money raised from Thursday’s event will benefit several charitable funds that help patients facing medical bills with food, housing and utility payments. A percentage of the funds raised will also benefit the Open Door Clinic in Burlington, allowing them to buy equipment to facilitate more virtual care services.
"We can’t think of a better way of honoring our past than by looking at more ways to serve our community in the future," Boon said.
“Throughout all of the mergers that have happened … the focus has always been how can we better care for our community by advancing services and caring better for those individuals in our community,” Boon added Friday. The funds raised will allow ARMC to tackle those goals.
Thursday’s event was just one of 25 days of celebration planned by the foundation. According to a Facebook post, the foundation spent the last 25 days celebrating the hospital’s anniversary through online posts.
ARMC was born through a series of hospital mergers in Alamance County. In 1916, the area’s first hospital, Rainey Hospital, opened. Decades later in 1951, Alamance County Hospital opened. When Rainey Hospital shut down in 1961, Memorial Hospital of Alamance opened to fill its shoes. Healthcare in the county continued with this two hospital system for many years.
In 1986, Alamance County Hospital and Memorial Hospital of Alamance merged under the umbrella of Alamance Health Services. In 1995, the hospitals unified further as Alamance Regional Medical Center at its current location on Huffman Mill Road. It was the first community hospital merger in North Carolina.
In 2011, ARMC began merging with regional health system Cone Health and the transition was completed in the spring of 2013. The current hospital site and services continued to expand in the years since.
All four presidents of ARMC, Tom Ryan, John Currin, Preston Hammock and current president Mark Gordon, spoke at Thursday night’s event, reflecting on the hospital’s history, previous mergers and the accomplishments of the past 25 years.
Gordon, who joined the hospital in March, touched on the challenges of the current health crisis, but expressed confidence in the community’s ability to respond.
“I came to you in a time when COVID was hitting its peak,” Gordon said. “It was a very interesting time to join Alamance Regional Medical Center and Cone Health, but what I’ve appreciated is I’ve seen the heart of this community in full bloom. You have an amazing medical staff, you have an amazing clinical nursing staff here. They are amazing individuals who do incredible work every single day.”
“The best care is local and the best care is in the community,” Gordon said.
Gordon also touched on what’s next for ARMC – a Cone Health merger with Sentara Healthcare, which was announced last month.
“We’re going to have new conversations around how do we transfer knowledge and information between two top-notch organizations, both of whom are premier in their states in terms of outcomes and quality,” he said. “This is going to be a very exciting opportunity for our future and I look forward to working with you and everyone else to craft our future.”
That merger is expected to be formalized by mid-2021.
