Brett Kelman and Samantha Liss

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After Appalachian Hospitals Merged Into a Monopoly, Their ERs Slowed to a Crawl

Ballad Health was granted the nation’s largest state-sanctioned hospital monopoly in 2018. Since then, its emergency rooms have become more than three times as slow.

These Appalachia Hospitals Made Big Promises to Gain a Monopoly. They’re Failing to Deliver.

Ballad Health, the only hospital system across a large swath of Tennessee and Virginia, has fallen short of quality-of-care and charity care obligations — even as it’s sued thousands of patients for unpaid bills.