Your Hospital in Kanawha County Has a 1-Star CMS Rating — Here's What That Means for Your Medicare When Hospitals Close or Get Cut From Networks

Let me be straight with you about what's happening in Kanawha County right now. You've got four hospitals listed in the county. But when you look at the CMS data — the same data Medicare Advantage insurers use when they decide who stays in-network and who gets cut — the picture gets stark real fast.

Charleston Area Medical Center at 501 Morris Street is your main acute care hospital. It's the biggest one. And CMS just rated it 1 star out of 5. Thomas Memorial Hospital in South Charleston doesn't even have a rating — it's listed as "Not Available." CAMC Charleston Surgical Hospital has no rating and no emergency services. Highland Hospital is psychiatric only, no emergency department. (CMS Hospital Compare, 2026)

Now add this: Kanawha County has a population of 174,805 people. (CDC PLACES, 2023) A lot of them are older. A lot of them have serious health conditions. And the hospital system they depend on is showing warning signs that matter directly to your Medicare coverage.

What does a 1-star CMS hospital rating actually mean for your Medicare?

CMS doesn't hand out 1-star ratings lightly. The rating system scores hospitals on five categories: mortality rates, safety of care, readmission rates, patient experience, and timeliness and effectiveness of care. A 1-star rating means CAMC scored in the lowest tier across those combined measures. (medicare.gov/care-compare)

Here's what that means for your Medicare, specifically:

Why do Kanawha County's health statistics make hospital access a life-or-death issue?

I've covered rural healthcare long enough to know that statistics can feel abstract until you connect them to real geography. So let me connect these numbers to Kanawha County specifically.

Look at those numbers side by side. Nearly 1 in 11 Kanawha adults has coronary heart disease. Another 8% have COPD. Four-point-two percent have had a stroke. (CDC PLACES, 2023) These aren't conditions you manage at a pharmacy. These are conditions that send you to the emergency room, sometimes in the middle of the night, sometimes in the worst weather Kanawha County can throw at you.

And 15.2% of adults in this county have a mobility disability — meaning they can't just hop in a car and drive an hour to another hospital if the local one can't serve them. (CDC PLACES, 2023) When rural healthcare advocates talk about "access," this is what we mean. It's not abstract. It's 26,571 people in Kanawha County alone who have difficulty moving around, many of whom are seniors.

What are the 4 hospitals in Kanawha County, and what does each one mean for your Medicare?

Here is the complete Kanawha County hospital landscape as it stands today, pulled directly from CMS Hospital Compare:

Here's what that inventory tells you in plain English: only two of these four hospitals have emergency departments. If you have a heart attack or a stroke in Kanawha County, you are going to CAMC or Thomas Memorial. That's it. And of those two, only CAMC has a CMS star rating on record — and it's the lowest possible score.

Thomas Memorial is part of the Thomas Health system, which has faced financial strain and merger pressures in recent years. The absence of a CMS star rating for Thomas Memorial is itself a yellow flag — it means CMS could not calculate a reliable composite score, often because a hospital has not reported sufficient data across all five quality domains. (CMS Hospital Compare methodology)

What actually happens to your Medicare coverage if a hospital closes?

This is the question I get more than any other. Let me break it down clearly, because the answer is different depending on what kind of Medicare you have.

If you have Original Medicare (Traditional Medicare, Parts A and B)

Your coverage is not tied to any specific hospital. Original Medicare will cover inpatient care at any Medicare-certified hospital in the country. If CAMC closes tomorrow, you take your red, white, and blue Medicare card to Charleston General, to CAMC Teays Valley, to Ruby Memorial in Morgantown — wherever is nearest and certified. You pay the standard Part A deductible ($1,676 per benefit period in 2026) and your standard cost-sharing applies. (medicare.gov/costs)

If you have Medicare Advantage (Part C)

This is where hospital closures and network changes directly bite Medicare Advantage enrollees. Your plan only covers care at in-network providers at the in-network rate. If your hospital closes or is removed from your plan's network:

• HMO plans: Out-of-network care is generally NOT covered except in emergencies. You may be left with large bills for care at facilities your plan doesn't cover.
• PPO plans: Out-of-network care is covered, but at significantly higher cost-sharing — sometimes double the in-network rate.
• Special Enrollment Period (SEP): If your plan loses a hospital from its service area, CMS grants you a 60-day SEP to switch plans. This is your escape hatch — but only if you know it exists and use it in time. (CMS.gov SEP rules)

What does high cholesterol data — 43.6% in Kanawha County — mean for hospital network stability?

Here's a connection that doesn't get made enough. 43.6% of screened Kanawha County adults have high cholesterol. (CDC PLACES, 2023) That's nearly half. High cholesterol is a primary driver of coronary heart disease and stroke — the two conditions that most frequently require emergency cardiac care and inpatient hospitalization.

When you have a population this sick concentrated in a county where your primary acute care hospital has a 1-star rating, what happens? Medicare Advantage insurers look at risk scores. They look at quality metrics. They calculate whether their contract with that hospital is producing good outcomes for their enrollees. A hospital that keeps readmitting heart patients — that can't keep mortality rates down — is a hospital that becomes expensive and legally complicated for an insurer to keep in its network.

I'm not saying CAMC is about to be cut from every Medicare Advantage network in Kanawha County. What I'm saying is that the data points are all pointing in a direction you need to be watching. A 1-star rating combined with a high-burden chronic disease population is a combination that has preceded network exits in other counties. Pretending it can't happen here is how people get caught off guard.

What about the broader picture — are rural hospitals across West Virginia at risk?

Kanawha County is not an island. It sits in a state that has already felt the pain of rural hospital contraction. Across the country, 136 rural hospitals have closed since 2010, according to the Chartis Center for Rural Health. Hundreds more are classified as "vulnerable" — meaning they are operating at a financial loss or have inadequate cash reserves to weather disruptions. (Chartis Center for Rural Health, 2024)

West Virginia's rural hospitals face the same pressures: declining reimbursement rates, workforce shortages, an aging patient population with high disease burden, and the ongoing threat of 2027 CAH Medicare reimbursement cuts that could further strain Critical Access Hospitals across the state.

The 24% of Kanawha County adults who rate their own health as "fair or poor" — that's 41,953 people — represent a population that generates high healthcare utilization. That's not a criticism. That's what happens when decades of economic pressure, environmental factors, and limited preventive care access converge in one county. (CDC PLACES, 2023) These are the patients who need the hospital most. They deserve to know what's actually happening with it.

What can you actually do right now — specific steps for Kanawha County seniors