Something's Afoot in the SC Lowcountry: Visiting a historic 'country' hospital

Journalist, author and historian Michael DeWitt Jr. will be hiking the highways, byways, and waterways of lower South Carolina for his new health, travel and lifestyle column.

DESTINATION: Hampton Regional Medical Center campus and surrounding area

DISTANCE: 4.4 miles

It's the morning of March 17, 2025, and although I am only a couple of miles from the very spot where I was born, I am lost.

Adult Atlantic salmon instinctively remember the place where they entered the world and will navigate hundreds of miles upstream to spawn in the same birthplace waters.

Those fish must be smarter than yours truly, because although I came into this world kicking and screaming at this very hospital, back in 1972 when it was called Hampton General Hospital, I am forced to use my phone's Google Maps GPS app to find my way.

I had set out to walk the Hampton Regional Medical Center and Coast Plains associates healthcare campus, but the surrounding wooded neighborhoods behind the hospital beckoned me to explore them. Now I'm not quite sure where I am and how to get back to my Ford truck waiting in the HRMC parking lot.

I embarked on this hiking/column-writing journey in search of more exercise, better health, and a good story or two, vowing to walk every corner of my home county, and what better symbolic place to walk and improve your health than Hampton County's only hospital and its surrounding environs?

But the woods behind the campus are dark and shaded, and some of the neighborhood dogs are large and ferocious in appearance. Perhaps I've been reading too many Stephen King horror thrillers, but my pace is quickening. Are those footsteps I hear behind me? The sounds of clawed, padded feet?

Our lives can be like this, in a sense, as we wander through life worrying about frightening healthcare risks nipping at our heels, and not sure where to go in search for the salvation and safety of answers, prevention or cures.

You can blame all these frantic but deep thoughts on my horrible sense of direction, or chalk it up to the spellbinding Southern Gothic audiobook telling me captivating stories through my wireless earbuds to the point of total distraction, but hopefully the search party will find my remains not long after the pursuing canines corner and catch me.

"Have you heard the sound of the lost safari?" My jokester of a father once sang to me on a wilderness hunting trip, before delivering the rhyming punchline: "Where the hell are we? Where the hell are we?"

My father also likes to tell people that I set the hospital record back then for ugliest baby born in Hampton County, describing me as something akin to a skinned, pink rat, but you can’t believe everything that old timer says. They don't deliver squalling babies like me here at HRMC anymore, but they do many, many other amazing things for our community.

Elsewhere in this edition of the newspaper or our website you can read a story about this hospital’s economic impacts on our community and the S.C. Lowcountry. The second largest employer in Hampton County, HRMC employs 282 people and pays more than $15.4 million in salaries each year, in addition to its indirect, spinoff impacts.

Each year, The Hampton County Guardian newspaper also publishes stories on the many quality-of-care awards earned by HRMC and its staff. My own spouse can attest to this, having recently “enjoyed” a stay there after having gallbladder removal surgery, a procedure that ended with a most positive outcome.

And there will be more to celebrate soon. Hampton County’s hospital first opened its doors in November of 1950, and this fall HRMC will celebrate its 75^th Anniversary. There will be some special events for community members to enjoy, and I will be writing several stories about my birthplace in your hometown paper and our regional online platforms.

I may have a lousy sense of direction, but I know a good thing when I find it. In a sense, the Hampton County hospital is an oasis of sorts, a shining beacon for lost souls wandering in a healthcare desert. Many rural counties have no hospitals to call their own, or have seen their facilities close the doors, forcing area residents to travel farther for quality care.

Hampton County and Lowcountry residents should feel fortunate to have such an award-winning, growing hospital right here in rural Varnville and support HRMC in any way possible.

Even if my Ugliest Baby Award is still hanging on the walls inside.

Come walk with me again soon. I'll let you lead the way.

(A view of Hampton General Hospital not long after it opened in 1950.)

More on the history of Hampton County’s hospital

Courtesy of Hampton Regional Medical Center

"A DREAM MATERIALIZED IN HAMPTON COUNTY"

The quote above titles an article from The Hampton County Guardian on November 8, 1950, acknowledging the opening and dedication of Hampton General Hospital. The original hospital was constructed on over 14 acres of land given by Mrs. Elizabeth M. Rentz in memory of her late husband, William H. Rentz of Varnville.

The history of Hampton Regional Medical Center is the history of medicine in Hampton County. The hospital, then known as Hampton General Hospital, was built at a total cost of $283,000 and dedicated on November 1, 1950. Hampton General Hospital was a county-owned facility that was governed by a board of directors selected by the Hampton County Council. This was a typical form of hospital governance, but uncommon today. There were numerous renovations and additions throughout the years.

In 1995, Hampton County Council converted the hospital to a South Carolina Public Benefit, not-for-profit hospital (a 501(c)3 corporation) and turned the governance over to a community based voluntary board of directors. At that time, the hospital was renamed Hampton Regional Medical Center. Under a new form of governance and new management, HRMC has prospered and grown to become one of the county's largest employers. The hospital is at the center of a growing medical community, and in 2005 was named one of the Top 100 hospitals in the United States by Cleverley & Associates.

In the fall of 2008, Hampton Regional Medical Center opened into its new hospital facility with an adjacent Medical Office Building housing physicians specializing in internal medicine, cardiology, orthopedics, general surgery, ophthalmology, podiatry and neurology. In 2019, HRMC signed a strategic alliance with the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) that will transform the delivery of rural health care in South Carolina; together, HRMC and MUSC will extend primary and specialty care to serve Hampton County and surrounding areas by leveraging the combination of advanced practitioners, the latest telehealth services, and supportive oversight by MUSC specialists.