Border Belt Independent
By Morgan Casey
About 1,000 physicians, physician assistants and nurse practitioners at Cape Fear Valley Health are responsible for delivering health care to hundreds of thousands of residents living in the health system’s nine-county service area, including Bladen and Robeson.
That number should increase, according to Michael Nagowski, CEO of Cape Fear Valley Health, and Stanley Wearden, president of Methodist University, thanks to the country’s newest medical school opening in Fayetteville.
The Methodist University Cape Fear Valley Health School of Medicine is expected to welcome its first class of 64 students in July 2026, pending accreditation by the Liaison Commission on Medical Education. Its decision is expected in October.
“We’re founded in the great Wesleyan tradition, a long tradition of higher education, and it’s all about service,” Wearden said at the Greater Fayetteville Chamber’s State of the Community event last month. “It’s about teaching students that there’s an expectation that they’ll serve their community.”
Nagowski and Wearden are optimistic that the students will go on to practice in the region, helping alleviate the shortage of mental health and primary care physicians. The reason: Cape Fear Valley Health is offering them residencies. Sixty-seven percent of medical school graduates who complete medical school and residency in North Carolina remain in the state to practice, according to research from the Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research at UNC-Chapel Hill.
Nagowski said the health system is looking to add more residency programs as it expands and obtains more national recognition. Last month, U.S. News & World Report ranked the system’s Medical Center in Fayetteville 20th in the state for “Best Regional Hospital.” The ranking follows the center’s expansion, which added new helipads and nearly doubled the number of beds in its intensive care and step-down units.
And a new medical office building behind the Medical Center will house an ambulatory surgery center, a full-service imaging center and other physician specialties, Nagowski told attendees.
“I challenge you to find another health system that’s grown at the same pace while maintaining a focus regionally,” he said. “This is our home. This is where we raised our family. This is where we’re focused.”
Wearden said the medical school wouldn’t be possible without the longstanding partnership with Cape Fear Valley Health and the financial contributions made by community members, including a $1.5 million grant from the Duke Endowment earlier this month. So far, the school has raised about $23 million of the $30 million fundraising goal announced at its topping off ceremony in April, Brad Johnson, director of marketing and communications for Methodist University, told CityView.
“These gifts are irrigating the doctor desert,” Wearden said to the about 600-person crowd gathered for the State of the Community. “You’re doing your part to make sure that that doctor desert is lush and it’s a doctoral oasis in the future.”
However, the care provided by Cape Fear Valley Health and future Methodist medical school graduates could be limited by the Medicaid cuts included in H.R.1, also called the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.” The legislation, which President Donald Trump signed into law in July, includes cutting $793 billion from Medicaid over the next decade, in addition to cuts to the Affordable Care Act, according to an analysis from KFF.
The cuts threaten people’s ability to access health care, Dr. James Madara, executive vice president and CEO of the American Medical Association, wrote in a letter to Senate leaders. In Cumberland County, almost 28,500 residents are expected to lose their health coverage under Medicaid expansion unless the North Carolina General Assembly supplements the lost federal dollars.
Across the state, approximately 255,000 people would lose their coverage because of the law’s work requirements, Jay Ludlam, deputy secretary of NC Medicaid for the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services, said during a July press briefing.
In its statement on H.R.1, the American College of Emergency Physicians warned that the Medicaid cuts could lead to emergency rooms being inundated with patients since they can’t turn patients away due to a lack of health insurance. Cape Fear Valley Health’s Medical Center’s emergency department is already ranked among the top 15 busiest in the country, according to the health system.
At the State of the Community, North Carolina’s U.S. Rep. David Rouzer defended his decision to vote for H.R.1 and the changes it will make to not only Medicaid but also the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as food stamps. In his remarks, Rouzer said the $287 billion in federal funding cuts to SNAP were “modifications have to be made to these programs long term” to ensure the program’s fiscal responsibility and lower the national debt.
He said SNAP needed to have stricter eligibility requirements after they were relaxed during the COVID-19 pandemic. The federal government suspended all program compliance for SNAP, permitting people who may no longer be eligible or who haven’t completed the necessary recertification to maintain their benefits.
“We have to have a course correction there,” Rouzer said. “That’s part of what we’ve been grappling with this year.”
The changes to SNAP are expected to cost Cumberland County $2.8 million per year in additional program administrative costs, bringing its total to $8.7 million, Brenda Jackson, director of Cumberland County’s Department of Social Services, reported in a June board meeting. She said the county would also need to pay another $31 million per year to meet its share of benefit costs.
“It’s going to hit us hard,” Veronica Jones, vice chair of the Cumberland County Board of Commissioners and member of the county’s Board of Social Services, told CityView following the State of the Community event. “Many funding sources from the state and federal government grants are no longer there. We’re starting to have to be creative. We’re starting to ask in our budget, ‘What’s important?’”
North Carolina’s U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis was one of the few Republicans in the House and Senate to vote against H.R.1, and announced his retirement soon after. Tillis emphasized to the crowd at the State of the Community that he voted against the legislation because of the negative impacts it would have on residents’ health care.
“I had no problem with the $800 billion in cuts around program integrity, waste, fraud, and abuse. It was $800 million in savings,” Tillis said. “The problem is somebody in the White House suggested another $200 million in savings that were poorly thought out, clearly done by somebody who doesn’t know how to do execution, and are economically problematic for the state of North Carolina.”
The true impacts of the cuts aren’t expected to be felt until Oct. 1, 2026, when the first changes in operations are implemented.
CityView Reporter Morgan Casey is a corps member with Report for America, a national service program that places journalists into local newsrooms. Morgan’s reporting focuses on health care issues in and around Cumberland County and can be supported through the News Foundation of Greater Fayetteville.
