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Southampton Memorial Home Health held a ribbon-cutting ceremony Aug. 7 to highlight its new location at 1330 Armory Drive and to celebrate its staff.

The home health organization has been in existence since 1992, operating out of Southampton Memorial Hospital until December 2023.

SMHH officially moved out of the hospital, now known as Bon Secours – Southampton Medical Center, on Dec. 14 and is no longer affiliated with the hospital. SMHH is instead owned by Louisiana-based LHC Group.

Mandy Cook, SMHH account executive, explained what prompted the organization’s move from the hospital to Armory Drive.

“We wanted to be more visible to the community so that they know we’re there and have an open-door policy if they need to come in and chat with us and see what we can do to help the seniors out in the community,” she said.

She gave one example of that open-door policy.

“Every second Wednesday from 10 a.m.-1 p.m., we have an open-door event with education on different things every month, depending on what topic we want to do for that month,” she said. “We offer education on diabetes management, lots of disease management that seniors don’t have the time to learn about while they’re in the doctor’s office for a quick visit.”

SMHH’s website notes how the organization helps overall: “Our ongoing mission is to design a specific plan to help those in our care achieve their best possible health — in the comfort of home.

“Under the direct supervision of the referring physician, our highly skilled home care professionals deliver quality, compassionate care. We also include families and caregivers in the care process, offering valuable information, guidance and — most of all — support.”

Summarizing some of Southampton Memorial Home Health’s services, Cook said, “We do skilled nursing, physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy, and these are all 100% paid for by their Medicare benefit.”

SMHH serves some home-bound younger people, but its patients, who are all referred by doctors, are primarily from the senior population, and the organization’s coverage area includes Franklin, Southampton County, Isle of Wight County and Suffolk.

For more information on SMHH services, visit https://lhcgroup.com/locations/southampton-memorial-home-health/.

Southampton Memorial Home Health Executive Director Sandy Edwards explained why the ribbon cutting for the Armory Drive location came about eight months after the move.

“We actually were waiting for our signage to come in, the signage over top of our building, because sometimes when you look at the storefront here, it sort of runs into the Food Lion area, so we wanted our signage to be up so that people would pay attention the next time they came through, that we are here and this is our sign,” she said.

The signage for SMHH was installed this summer.

Edwards noted that the organization opted to broaden the ribbon-cutting ceremony into a community event to celebrate SMHH staff. Those staff members and several of their families and friends, as well as community supporters and Franklin-Southampton Area Chamber of Commerce members joined Franklin Mayor Robert “Bobby” Cutchins for the ceremony, which was facilitated by the chamber.

“We just thought it would be a great time to honor all the good work that our staff does out in the community,” Edwards said. “So we sort of made it into a celebration as well, a celebration of our people.”

Cook said SMHH has 11 employees.

“We are actually fully staffed at this time,” she said. “We’re looking to grow and add new staff with the client census. If the census grows, we can (add) more staff, of course, but we are staffed and ready to serve patients within 24 hours of their referral.”

Edwards said, “We love our community, we love what we do, and our staff represents over 200 years of home health experience, so they’re good at what they do, and we love where we do it at, so it was nice to be able to honor that (Aug. 7).”