By BARBARA GREEN
[email protected]
About 200 people filled the Bowie Community Center Wednesday night for a town hall meeting about the need for a hospital or emergency room in Bowie.
This session was organized after the unexpected Oct. 6 closure of the Faith Community Emergency Room in Bowie just two weeks shy of the one-year anniversary of its opening.
Bowie was without a local hospital since early 2020 when Central Hospital closed after just a few years of operation. Central purchased the Bowie Memorial Hospital property after BMH closed its doors on Nov. 16, 2015 after nearly 50 years of operation.
Wednesday’s meeting was filled with a variety of citizens including many seniors, families and local business people. Melody Gillespie served as moderator for the meeting, assisted by Jennifer Tellef and Robert Ragsdale.
Bowie City Manager Bert Cunningham also participated in the discussion, but noted he was there as a citizen supporting the pursuit of a hospital or ER, and the city could not be involved.
Gillespie, a local realtor and chairman of the county Republican Party, explained this is a grassroots movement and she anticipates possibly three meetings to determine the desire to pursue the creation of a taxing hospital district to support a medical care center. A tentative meeting is set for Nov. 19 with details coming later.
“This is a meeting to hear from you. I have a few rental properties and understand the concern about taxes. We are faced with a dilemma. This isn’t just about Bowie. I don’t live in the city limits, but it is about a lot of people in this area,” said Gillespie.
The moderator added she knew very little about a hospital district when she was asked to do this, but she began researching and found it is an entity run by the people in its boundaries through an elected board.
Cunningham, who helped organize this meeting, thanked the large group for coming out. Looking back to 1966 when the original hospital authority was formed and BMH was built it operated successfully for many years, but he said changes in federal government funding and reimbursements changed the way hospitals were able to operate.
“We could berate those operations or the ones that followed, but it won’t serve a good purpose. I believe we need to form a hospital district, we need to be in control of our own destiny. We need to be able to enact taxes. You can’t run a hospital in this country without a subsidy or tax,” explained Cunningham.

Read the full story in the weekend Bowie News.