Nash Health Care System in Rocky Mount and Heritage Hospital in Tarboro are both carrying health care into the future at a fast clip.

Nash Health Care is a non-profit hospital authority comprised of five hospitals totaling 403 beds: Nash General Hospital, Nash Day Hospital, Bryant T. Aldridge Rehabilitation Center, Community Hospital and Coastal Plain Hospital. Its medical odyssey began with the opening of Nash General Hospital in 1971.

Heritage Hospital opened in 1985 and has 117 beds. It has become part of University Health Systems of Eastern Carolina, giving its patients access to services provided by Pitt County Memorial Hospital and specialty physicians at the Brody School of Medicine at East Carolina University.

Both Heritage Hospital and Nash Health Care offer basic health services that range from emergency services – which total more than 23,000 per year at Heritage and 65,000 per year at Nash General Hospital – through Family Medicine, Cardiology, Pediatrics, Obstetrics & Gynecology, Orthopedics, Urology and Rehabilitation.

Patients have access to many specialty services to treat cancer, rheumatoid arthritis, Parkinson’s disease and neurological disorders and many others. And each hospital system offers the latest in diagnostic procedures beyond X-ray, to pinpoint causes of disease and pain, such as CT scanning and MRI technology.

This year, Nash Health Care broke ground on a new medical office facility in Middlesex to help provide convenient, superior quality healthcare to residents of Southern Nash County. It features a Primary/Urgent Care Clinic that operates six days per week with some weekend and evening hours and accepts walk-in patients.

Nash Health Care, like Heritage Hospital, partnered with University Health Systems of Eastern North Carolina in the delivery of specialized heart care services.

It paved the way for the Nash Heart Center to become a reality, and performs heart catheterizations and stent placements to widen obstructed blood vessels.

In addition, Nash General Hospital is in the process of building a new Emergency Care Center, and has taken steps to build an Emergency Department for young people – infants to age 17.

The Women’s Center at Nash Health Care, through a neonatology program agreement with Duke Medicine, can care for more critically ill infants.

During the past year Heritage Hospital completed plans for the opening of a new rural healthcare clinic in Pinetops and a new 1.8 million building to house an MRI unit in the Radiology department.

The MRI building opened on June 2 and the Pinetops medical facility, named UHS Pinetops Family Medicine, held its grand opening on August 30.