The company that has run Elmore Community Hospital for 26 years told an Elmore County judge Wednesday that Baptist Health of Montgomery, the county’s economic development authority and members of the public board that owns the hospital worked on a secret plan, code-named “Project Mercury,” to build a replacement hospital under the control of Baptist.
Circuit Judge J. Amanda Baxley granted Ivy Creek a temporary restraining order Thursday afternoon, barring the Elmore County Economic Development Authority and the Elmore County Health Care Authority from “taking any actions in furtherance of” the request for proposals, “including without limitation receiving or submitting any proposals relating in any way to the RFP.”
The order came a day after the suit was filed and five days before proposals were due.
Ivy Creek of Elmore, LLC, the Ivy Creek Healthcare entity that holds the hospital lease, made the allegation in a sworn complaint filed Wednesday with a motion for a temporary restraining order to stop the development authority from taking proposals for a replacement hospital before its Sept. 1 deadline.
The request for proposals, attached to the complaint, says the development authority is “working in conjunction with” the Elmore County Health Care Authority and asks bidders to propose how they would use “current hospital tax funds and other existing assets.”
Baxley found Ivy Creek has “a reasonable likelihood of success on the merits” and has shown it has “a business relationship, including a lease, with the Elmore County Health Care Authority, and that the Elmore County Economic Development Authority (ECEDA) is engaging in efforts to interfere with that business relationship.”
“It is clear that publicity about the development of a replacement hospital without the participation of Ivy Creek will result in loss of goodwill and business reputation to Ivy Creek,” the order states.
The defendants will suffer no hardship, it says, because an injunction “will merely maintain the status quo, requiring the Health Care Authority to observe the terms of its contractual relationship with Ivy Creek, while preventing ECEDA from interfering with that relationship.”
The order binds the authorities’ officers, agents, employees and attorneys and anyone “acting in active concert or participation with them who receive notice of this order.”
It also grants Ivy Creek’s motion for expedited discovery.
Baxley set a hearing on a preliminary injunction for Sept. 9 at 10 a.m., when the order expires, and conditioned it on Ivy Creek posting a $1,000 bond.
The order tracks the proposed order Ivy Creek filed with its motion, with the bond amount and hearing date filled in.
The filing came two days after Governor Kay Ivey announced Ivy Creek would receive nearly $2.2 million in the first round of the Alabama Rural Health Transformation Program, most of it for the emergency department and inpatient units at Elmore Community Hospital in Wetumpka.
“We took over this hospital in July 2000 because it was days from closing,” Michael D. Bruce, CEO of Ivy Creek Healthcare, said in a press release on Wednesday.
“Twenty-six years later it is open, staffed, and caring for this county every day. We are not going anywhere. We asked the court to step in because a hospital cannot recruit physicians, sign vendors, or plan for its patients while a private group with no standing in our lease tells the market we are on our way out.”
“Baptist Health of Montgomery, apparently at the behest of ECEDA, began working on a secretive proposal called ‘Project Mercury,’ which, on information and belief, envisioned Baptist Health of Montgomery, ECEDA, and the Health Care Authority collaborating to build a replacement hospital in Elmore County to be operated by Baptist Health of Montgomery,” the complaint states.
The Baptist allegations rest on information and belief, a legal phrase for claims based on belief rather than firsthand knowledge.
Ivy Creek’s motion for expedited discovery seeks the records it says would prove them.
The complaint, verified by Bruce, brings a tortious interference count against the development authority and a declaratory judgment count against the Health Care Authority.
Ivy Creek sent public records requests to the Health Care Authority and the Elmore County Commission in May seeking information about “Project Mercury,” and both asked for more time, according to the complaint.
Then, “in an obvious attempt to draw attention away from their clandestine activity, on July 29, 2026, ECEDA decided to instead publicly issue a ‘request for proposal,’” it states.
The RFP “was apparently the result of the work of a select ‘task force,’ one of whom was the CEO of ECEDA and one of whom had a clear conflict of interest.”
According to court documents, the RFP seeks a partner to fund and build “a modern replacement hospital” and says it “is being solicited in advance of the June 2030 Elmore Community Hospital scheduled lease expiration.”
Proposals had been due Tuesday to Richie Beyer, the development authority’s CEO, listed as the county’s chief operating officer in a 2021 study the authority commissioned.
That study recommended soliciting proposals from partners and warned that Baptist might have little incentive to keep care local.
The hospital tax dates to 1954 and brought the Health Care Authority about $1.45 million in the 2024 fiscal year, according to its most recent state audit.
Ivy Creek’s discovery requests seek communications with Baptist about “Project Mercury” or “Baptist Health’s proposal to open a free-standing ER facility or new hospital in Elmore County,” records on indigent care money, land and non-disclosure agreements tied to Baptist, communications with Jackson Hospital & Clinic and UAB Health System, two years of minutes from the development authority, the commission and the Health Care Authority, and records on the 17 Springs development in Millbrook.
With the discovery motion granted, Ivy Creek can depose Beyer and former development authority CEO Lisa Van Wagner; the motion asked that the depositions occur within 14 days.
“It is not clear what ECEDA actually is. While its name appears calculated to suggest that it is some sort of quasi-governmental organization, it is not,” the complaint states.
Public records show the county commission appoints the development authority’s board, and Van Wagner sat on the Health Care Authority’s board as of its most recent state audit.
The 2020 lease ran to 2025 with an extension at Ivy Creek’s option through 2030 and said the Health Care Authority would not “own, manage, operate or control any hospital, or other health care facility,” according to the complaint.
In 2024 the parties moved to a new five-year lease beginning in 2025 with a renewal option through 2035, the board approved it, its minutes show, and Ivy Creek signed it and has kept paying rent.
Ivy Creek calls the RFP’s 2030 date “false” – 2035 is the renewal option.
The complaint alleges that “by participating in the ECEDA RFP, the Health Care Authority has breached its contractual obligation not to control a competing health care facility in Elmore County.”
Ivy Creek’s motion argued the RFP “has already led to rumors that Ivy Creek is going out of business.”
The complaint says the threat “could lead to the financial demise of Ivy Creek before 2030.”
“We want a new hospital for Elmore County. We have said so to anyone who would listen, from Washington to Wetumpka,” Bruce said.
Grayson Everett is the editor in chief of Yellowhammer News. You can follow him on X @Grayson270.
