Article: Community rallies to buy hospital from Columbia. (Columbia/HCA Corp. sells back Ville Platte Medical Center to Ville Platte, Louisiana residents)(includes related articles on attraction of rural healthcare providers to private hospital chains and negotiations with Columbia/HCA Corp.)

Bond initiatives, business support and determination help small La. town take over hospital, expand services. Even as big investor-owned hospital companies are deepening their roots in rural America, one town has plucked its hospital off the for-profit tree and grasped an alternative future.

Townspeople in Ville Platte, La., population 11,000, have just bought their hospital back from no less than Columbia/HCA Healthcare Corp., the nation's largest for-profit chain, which is making stronger overtures to rural hospitals (See related stow, p. 49).

They converted the hospital to a not-for-profit institution, expanded its programs to meet local needs, ...

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