COLUMBUS, Ohio — Nearly five years since the demolition of Mount Carmel West, the healthcare system is finding new ways to serve the community in Franklinton.
The campus is now home to all of Mount Carmel’s Healthy Living Center services, including exercise programs, cooking classes, wellness programs and classes for new mothers.
“It is becoming a very community-based campus,” said Mary Jo Dickinson, director of operations for community health and wellbeing. “Franklinton is still our home, it has been our home since 1886. We are still very committed to serving the needs of the community through more community-based programs not necessarily in the walls of our physical building.”
Mount Carmel also brings its Medical Mobile Coach out into the community to reach patients wherever they are,and help people access resources for housing, addiction services, and transportation on top of physical health needs.
“It’s being intentional, it’s being proactive in making sure we are meeting the community where they are, not looking at it through a narrow lens,” Dickinson said.
Hospital services were moved to a new campus in Grove City in 2019, but the campus still has an active emergency department and enrollment is up at the nursing school, according to Dickinson.
Residents in Franklinton were initially upset to see the hospital go, according to Franklinton Board of Trade Executive Director Trent Smith.
“It is just an old building and it has been there forever and they didn’t want it torn down and I get that. But when you look at what that building was providing, compared to what we need, it was a mismatch,” Smith said.
Apartments are now being built where the hospital used to be, which Smith believes is a better use of the space.
“More residents means more buying power, more businesses, It means a grocery store, it means more amenities that the most mature neighborhood in central Ohio should have and used to have but we just lost it because of the divestment and the population loss over the decades. Now, we are seeing this trend reversed and now more residents because of housing like that on the former campus, that is exactly what we need,” he said.
Dickinson does not see a new full-service hospital in Franklinton’s future soon.
“I think what we have done is strategically place our hospitals where we are serving the community, but I really feel our focus here is gonna be the community, making us available to the community, making them feel welcome here, and to really look at the programs that add value and still connecting them to the medical support that they need,” she said.
Mount Carmel is building a new hospital in Dublin. It is expected to open in April 2025.