100 years in the making — Sublette County opens first hospital, ER
PINEDALE — On Oct. 15, 1925, the front page of the Big Piney Examiner featured a headline that read, “A hospital is our most essential need.”
One hundred years later, on August 4, 2025, Sublette County reached that historic milestone, opening the doors to its first Critical Access Hospital. Sublette is the last county in Wyoming to bring a hospital to fruition, saving residents an 80-mile one-way road trip through the Hoback Canyon to St. John’s Hospital in Jackson.
The $73.8 million project was funded through federal grants, funds from Sublette County and Pinedale governments, local mill levies, and $5.6 million in private donations raised by the Sublette County Health Foundation.
“It is tremendously exciting,” said Sublette County Hospital District public relations director Kari DeWitt. “It feels really good to reach this milestone and have the doors open and patients coming in and out. It took a huge, broad team of people all working in the same direction.”
The hospital features a four-bed emergency room, eight inpatient rooms, a detached complex laboratory with a blood bank, and an imaging department with X-Ray, Dexa, mammogram, MRI, and CT machines, plus dietary services.
The first patients began to arrive immediately, DeWitt said, eager to take advantage of the new facility and the expanded services that come along with it.
“We’ve already done a handful of MRIs; we’ve done a ton of mammograms. Adding these new radiology services means people don’t have to travel to seek care,” she said.
Sublette County women have historically not had the best compliance when it comes to mammograms, DeWitt said, noting folks would have to take a day off of work to travel to Jackson or Rock Springs for such an important health screening.
The hospital also features Sublette County’s first blood bank.
“Before August 4, you could not undergo a life-saving blood transfusion locally,” DeWitt said.
On the evening of August 4, the hospital welcomed six patients into its new emergency room, she said. In the first 15 days open, seven patients stayed in the hospital for two days or more.
“We’ve been averaging two to three people a night,” DeWitt said on August 18.
Many of the professionals staffing the Sublette County Hospital live locally or have ties to the community.
“Our MRI and mammogram technician came from a neighboring community and has a house in the county. We found a pharmacist from Jackson who is thrilled to be here and just bought a house in Pinedale to be closer to her sister and niece,” said DeWitt. “We’ve brought back some nurses who were working in other communities but wanted to come back home. We’ve had nurses move here from Sheridan, Casper, and Sweetwater County.”
CAH designation, reimbursements
A critical access hospital is a designation made by Congress to provide healthcare in rural areas without access to medical care.
Sublette County has offered urgent care through the clinics in Pinedale and Big Piney, meaning receiving clinic reimbursement rates from Medicare/Medicaid for the services offered.
“The example I like to use is a CT Scan,” DeWitt said. “We charge about $1,500 for a CT scan. As a critical access hospital, we’ll get about $1,100 (from Medicare/Medicaid) for a CT scan, but as a clinic, we’ve been getting $100 per CT scan.”
“That’s the revenue model that makes rural hospitals possible,” DeWitt said.
The SCHD will continue to operate its urgent care clinics in Pinedale and Big Piney, in addition to the emergency room, hospital, and long-term care facility.
Heritage Home
Future residents of the new long-term care facility, the Heritage Home, are expected to move into the new facility in September from the Sublette Center.
“We’ve been welcoming them up these last few weeks to pick out their rooms,” DeWitt said.
“The Heritage Home boasts 46 residential beds, plus a 10-bed memory care unit. It also features a Main Street, complete with a physical therapist, a hair salon called The Silver Fox, a cafe and coffee bar, and an activity room.”
An official ribbon cutting is planned at the hospital for 2 p.m. on Sept. 25. The public is encouraged to attend. Gov. Mark Gordon and Sen. John Barrasso have been invited.
This story was published on August 21, 2025.