Ballad Health today announced fourth-quarter and year-end results from its 2020 fiscal year, and that report illustrates the impact the COVID-19 pandemic has had on the healthcare provider. During the fourth quarter of the 2020 fiscal year, net patient revenue fell $139.1 million, a 26.8 percent decline from the same period during the previous year. Some of those losses were mitigated by $82.5 million in in ...

The ETSU Foundation will lease space at the Model Mill Development that will become the new home for the Office of University Advancement at East Tennessee State University as well as the ETSU National Alumni Association. ETSU anticipates relocating the offices to the Model Mill Development sometime in October of this year. “The restoration of the Mill has been a long anticipated project for this region and ...

HMG Clinical Research hasannounced plans to participate as study sites for, and begin enrolling participants into, the Phase 2/3 global study sponsored by Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE of an investigational vaccine, BNT162b2, against SARS-CoV-2, the virus causing the current global pandemic. Holston Medical Group study site is one of more than 120 clinical investigational sites around the world that will coll ...

U.S. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross has announced that the Department’s Economic Development Administration (EDA) is investing $4.4 million in the state of Tennessee to build critical infrastructure needed to support business growth.  The EDA grants, to be matched with more than $2 million in other federal or local funds, are expected to help create or retain nearly 900 jobs and generate $222.2 ...

Two loans totaling $330,000 to the Southwest Regional Recreation Authority (SRRA) were converted into grants recently by the Virginia Coalfield Economic Development Authority (VCEDA). The promissory notes for a $220,000 loan to SRRA for the Coal Canyon trail system in Buchanan County and a $100,000 loan for the Original Pocahontas (OP) trail in Tazewell County were forgiven and converted to g ...

To employ 160 making recycled linerboard by 2023 By Scott Robertson Domtar announced August 7 it will cease freesheet production operations at its Kingsport, Tenn., mill and refit the facility to produce linerboard, the material used to make the boxes in which products sold via ecommerce are shipped. The move is part of a company-wide cost reduction strategy aimed at creating annualized savings of $200 mill ...

by Scott Robertson “I’m 71 years old and I’ve never lived through anything like the last six months,” says Jim Fisher, a small business owner in Jonesborough, Tenn. Fisher and his wife Lynnea were at their wits’ end earlier this year. Their commercial greenhouse, Linnaea Gardens, rents decorative plants to businesses and maintains those plants at various locations throughout the region. When you see a ficus ...

Three meetings in one week drive potential action by Scott Robertson When the full boards of NETWORKS Sullivan Partnership (NETWORKS) and the Northeast Tennessee Regional Economic Partnership (NeTREP) met in late June to discuss a potential merger of their economic development efforts, the main action item instituted was the formation of three committees: one to discuss scope, another to discuss structure a ...

by Hannah Swayze In what used to be part of the Sync.Space offices in downtown Kingsport, the ARO Creative Inc. team attempts to carry on business as usual. Part of the team works from home, due to cautionary measures related to COVID-19. Others maneuver around an office mid-renovations. Employees video chat with coworkers to show off an impressive new light fixture and catch up on work which has piled on l ...

Above: East Tennessee State University President Dr. Brian Noland “This is a very fluid situation.” by Scott Robertson When ETSU President Dr. Brian Noland spoke with the Business Journal in May regarding planning for the fall semester, Noland said, “there are unlimited things for which we have planning uncertainty.” Time, however, waits for no institution of higher education, and planning uncertainty has h ...