Hospital ribbon cutting Monday

Hospital ribbon cutting Monday

Special ceremony at Baptist- Crittenden set with opening less than a month away

news@theeveningtimes.com

Four years ago when Crittenden Regional Hospital declared bankruptcy and closed its doors for good, County Judge Woody Wheeless never expected he would see a new one get built.

The old hospital left behind a tangled mess of debt and an aging building that nobody wanted.

Flash forward to 2018.

Not only is the county getting a brand spanking new hospital, but the facility is readying to open its doors a full month ahead of schedule.

Members of the public are invited to attend a ribbon cutting ceremony on Monday at 10 a.m. to see the official unveiling of the new $45 million, 65,000 square foot Baptist Memorial-Crittenden Hospital.

“I never thought we would be where we are today on this,” said County Judge Woody Wheeless, who shepherded the project to fruition. “It is definitely a nice state-of-the-art hospital. It is actually more than what I envisioned we would have in our county.

It’s just that nice.”

Looking back, Wheeless said it is a miracle they were able to find a partner willing to invest in Crittenden County. Crittenden Regional Hospital left behind more than $30 million in debt which included a lien on the building. It took the county and the bankruptcy court more than a year to clean up the mess and settle the debt.

The county scrambled to find a new health care group willing to lease the old hospital building. In the fall of 2015, the county reached a deal with Nashville-based Ameris Health Systems who proposed to lease the hospital from the county and invest $15 million to re-open the emergency room.

Voters went to the polls and passed a one cent tax that would generate $30 million to fund a new hospital, but the deal with Ameris fell through over concerns about what the money could be used for.

The county got good news in December 2015 when Baptist Memorial Healthcare, one of the region’s leading hospital and health care providers, signed a deal with the county to build a brand new facility on North Seventh Street just north of I-40.

The $45 million hospital will have 11 patient rooms, 10 ER operating suites, a cancer center, trauma rooms, endoscopy suite, and a cancer center with eight infusion chairs — all of the services that will be most helpful to the community.

The emergency room is expected to see about 26,000 patients a year.

Wheeless said the county could not have asked for a better partner than Baptist and that residents will be pleased with their new hospital.

“I give a lot of credit to the citizens of this county because they supported that tax and supported it by 86 percent to make it happen,” Wheeless said. “Nobody likes taxes, but we know it is sometimes necessary and in this case, it was the only way we were going to be able to move forward.

Now, on Monday they are going to have the opportunity to go in there and see what their money paid for.”

Baptist Memorial-Crittenden

will start seeing patients on Dec. 3 and will have about 100 employees.

By Mark Randall