The sale of the MedWest hospital trio in Haywood, Jackson and Swain counties will go through on July 31, in keeping with the transaction date that’s been in the crosshairs for the past few months.

Duke LifePoint HealthCare, a national for-profit hospital network, will take over Aug. 1 at Haywood Regional Medical Center, Harris Regional Hospital and Swain Medical Center. Medical practices under the umbrella of the hospital will come under Duke LifePoint at well.

LifePoint, which has 62 hospitals around the country — soon to be 65 — is no stranger to acquisitions. Little will change about the patient experience, at least initially, with the same doctors, nurses and front line health care workers coming to work Friday morning as they always have.

Some things to watch in coming weeks though are new corporate logos on billing statements and new signs going up at hospital entrances. 

Under MedWest, the hospitals names were all truncated with the prefix MedWest tacked on to the front: MedWest-Haywood, MedWest-Harris and MedWest-Swain.

The new names never really took with the public, who still referred to the hospitals colloquially by their old names. Under Duke LifePoint, the hospitals will revert to their former full name, with a more simple prefix of DLP tacked on to the front of the name, as in DLP Haywood Regional Medical Center.

— By Becky Johnson, Staff writer