Bob Francis knows the impact of Hartselle Medical Center on the community.

The hospital, which has been open since 1948, has been a vital part of Hartselle, employing hundreds and providing excellent emergency care services over the years.

But now that the hospital will close in just 13 days, he sees two major impacts on the community – the employees that are losing their jobs and the loss of an emergency care facility.

“On one side, there is the compassion aspect of this, in which all of the employees who have worked at the hospital are losing their jobs,” said Francis, who is also the chairman of the Hartselle Development Board. “But I also see this as a huge loss for economic development in Hartselle.”

Francis said attracting businesses, especially new industry, could get a little more difficult.

“It will hurt business, especially industry more than retail, because one of the things they look for is the availability of emergency care services,” Francis said. “The first few minutes of emergency care is the most important. And to lose a place like Hartselle Medical Center that provides this important aspect of health care, it’s really going to make it more difficult to attract more industry.”

To that end, Mayor Dwight Tankerlsey has begun to work with State Sen. Arthur Orr to attract some kind of health care facility to the HMC facility. On Friday, Tankerlsey met with Mark Medley, president of the hospital division of HMC’s owner Capella Healthcare.

“Capella is still trying to market the facility at this time,” Tankersley said. “We want to do everything in our power to make sure that we can have some kind of health care facility at HMC site.”

Tankersley said he’s met with Orr and others to help try to bring an emergency health care facility to Hartselle.

“It’s important for Hartselle to have emergency care available here,” he added.

In addition to losing property and sales tax revenues from the hospital, the city is also losing $7.7 million in payroll, which could also affect other retail businesses in Hartselle.

Capella announced the closing on Jan. 9, which was a few weeks after the company announced the sale of Parkway Medical Center in Decatur to Huntsville Hospital. A total of 136 employees currently are employed by HMC. Hartselle had already lost a number of employees when the company downsized last year by combining operations with Parkway.