New hospital slowly making progress

New hospital slowly making progress

Foundation work set to begin

news@theeveningtimes.com

The soil at the site of the new Baptist Memorial Hospital along Seventh Street and I-55 is great for planting and farming, but not so great for building a hospital on.

Contractors will spend the next six to eight months hauling off 138 million pounds of dirt and another 168 million pounds to the site in order to build up the land to support the foundation for the $30 million facility.

Hospital officials toured the site on Monday where excavation has begun and gave an update on the status of the project.

“We’re excited to be getting the site work going for the new hospital in Crittenden County,” said Brian Welton, Administrator and CEO of Baptist Memorial Hospital-Crittenden County. “We will be doing all the deep foundation work and transporting the dirt to the site. There is a lot of dirt work being done in order to prep the site for what will be a long lasting facility for years to come.”

Baptist Memorial Health Care broke ground last September on the 50,000 square foot facility which is expected to open in early to mid-2018.

The hospital will have 10 in-patient rooms, 10 emergency treatment rooms, two operating rooms, an endoscopy suite, patient lab, diagnostic imagery lab, and infusion center for cancer services.

“Anything you can find at an acute care hospital we will be able to provide to the folks in Crittenden County,” Welton said.

The hospital is expected to have about 90 to 100 employees.

Welton said the site work is expected to take about a year to complete. The actual building itself will be finished around November 2018.

The hospital will be one story and will be situated at an angle with access from both 7th Street and the Service Road. “The location is important,” Welton said. “You hear in real estate location, location, location. We wanted to make sure that we had a point that was accessible for everybody in the county to get to, even folks downtown who will find quick access to care right across the bridge.”

County Judge Woody Wheeless, who worked tirelessly to find a health care provider who was willing to build a hospital in Crittenden County, said he is excited to see dirt being moved and heavy equipment coming and going at the site.

The county has been without a hospital since the former Crittenden Regional Hospital declared bankruptcy and closed in 2014.

Baptist is the largest health care provider in the mid-South with 17 hospitals in the region and over 200 beds.

Officials predict that about 25,000 patients a year will use the ER.

“This is a major deal for our community today and the surrounding counties also,” Wheeless said. “We worked hard for close to two years hoping we could land somebody who would come over here and partner with our county to get emergency services over here and get a hospital open at either the existing facility or a new one. We hit a grand slam no doubt by partnering with Baptist. Their reputation, the quality of health care, it just brings us to another level in our county and we are excited about that.”

The cost to build the hospital is being supported by a one cent sales tax which will generate over $30 million over the next five years.

Collections for the new hospital reached a record high in February with $622,000 and keeps the county on pace to collect $32 to $33 million.

“The tax collections are going a little better than we anticipated,” Wheeless said. “We are on track or a little bit higher than we anticipated.”

Wheeless said the facility is going to be a great asset not only to the local communities, but to the entire region. “This will affect more than just Crittenden County,” Wheeless said. “We believe without a doubt we will draw patients from surrounding smaller counties coming to seek care. I drive by every day. I’m always

Photos by John Rech looking this way. It’s going to take some time to

get it built. But it is going to be worth the wait.”

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Image courtesy of Facebook

By Mark Randall