Community Health Services, Inc history

Smith joined Community Health after spending more than two decades working for Louisville, Kentucky-based Humana Inc., joining the healthcare provider in 1973 after serving a four-year stint as a Captain in the United States Army Medical Services Corp.

March 1985: Community Health Systems is founded with the first purchase of a hospital in May 1985.

The hospital, acquired in January 1986, contained 34 licensed beds, the fewest number of beds acquired by the company during its first 20 years in business.

Local physicians, government, and private organizations came together in 1987 to create Community Health Care (CHC) as a private, non-profit organization focused on meeting the needs of the underserved.

Congress, in 1989, established the Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC) program that asked for reimbursement for both Medicare and Medicaid.

In 1990, for instance, the company paid $850 million for Gulfstream Aerospace Corp. and sold the company six years later for $4 billion.

Smith rose through the executive ranks at Humana, becoming its president and chief operating officer in 1993.

In 1994, Forstmann Little paid $1.4 billion for Ziff-Davis Publishing and sold it the following year for $2.1 billion.

At the end of 1995, Chaney announced he no longer wanted to lead the company, giving Community Health's board of directors a deadline for his departure that left the governing body scrambling for a replacement.

In March 1996, the New York-based investment banking firm Merrill Lynch was hired to solicit interest in the company.

1997: Wayne T. Smith is named president and chief executive officer of Community Health.

Revenue in 1998 exceeded $850 million, eclipsing the $1 billion mark the following year.

By mid-1999, the company had acquired two more hospitals, giving it a total of 45 hospitals, and had signed letters of intent to acquire five more hospitals.

In June 2000, the company completed its IPO, raising $245 million from the offering and gaining another $269 million through a secondary offering of stock completed before the end of the year.

Community Health adhered to a disciplined acquisition strategy, selecting hospitals that were ailing for reasons that were not related to the market they served. "You can fix bad hospitals; you can't fix bad markets," an analyst noted in the June 24, 2002 issue of Investor's Business Daily.

2004: Forstmann Little divests its remaining stake in Community Health.

July 2007: Community Health Systems, Inc. completes the acquisition of Triad Hospitals, Inc. adding more than 50 hospitals and nearly doubling the size of the organization.

It was in the year 2008 that 1,080 CHCs gave primary health care to a population of more than 17.1 million people.

By the year 2009 community health centers started receiving their funding through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) and these health centers became available to a population of greater than 18 million people.

In 2013, with a partnership of physicians, hospitals, and government, CHC was able to expand its mission of clinical education with the opening of a new, state-of-the-art building.

January 2014: Community Health Systems, Inc. completes the acquisition of Health Management Associates, Inc., adding approximately 70 hospitals to the organization.