Mergers & Acquisitions
•Kindred Healthcare Inc., Louisville, Ky., acquired Signature Health Services, LLC, a home health company with 10 locations primarily in Ohio, and Kindred operates two long-term acute care hospitals and nine nursing and rehabilitation centers within the service areas of these home health operations.
•The National Association of Children's Hospitals and Related Institutions, the National Association of Children's Hospitals and Child Health Corp. of America plan to merge. During the due diligence, which is expected to be completed in March, the organizations' leaders will discuss merger details and complete the necessary legal steps to restructure and consolidate the three organizations under a single fiduciary board. The Kansas City and Washington, D.C., offices will continue to serve as the organizations' hubs and programs of each organization will operate as usual during this time.
Openings
•The Simon Family Tower is a new 10-story, 675,000 square-foot inpatient building attached to Riley Hospital for Children, Indianapolis. The first phase of the project will be unveiled on Jan. 27 with the opening of Floors 7, 8 and 9. Construction began in 2006 and in 2007 the Simon family announced a $40 million gift toward the completion of the project. Economic conditions halted construction temporarily, but work began again in early 2010. The tower, designed to add capacity, increase efficiency and enhance patient satisfaction, is scheduled for completion in 2013.
•The new Frank Wiesner Intensive Care Unit at Theda Clark Medical Center, Appleton, Wis., unveiled a newly designed second-floor unit with larger patient rooms and closer staff workstations that speaks to the evolution of technology and patient needs. The ICU was dedicated on Dec. 2 to Wiesner, founding Foundation president, and marks the culmination of the Foundation's $10.3-million Next Century Campaign. The trauma center at Theda Clark serves 10 counties and is only one of eight adult Level II-verified hospitals in Wisconsin.
Projects
•The Texas Medical Center in Houston recently expanded beyond its central campus for the first time in its 65-year history. Texas Medical Center – West Campus represents an initial investment of more than half a billion dollars and almost 1.2 million square feet of state-of-the-art health care development by Texas Children's Hospital and The Methodist Hospital System. When its emergency center and hospital services open in spring 2011, Texas Children's Hospital West Campus will be among the nation's largest suburban pediatric hospitals with a 294,000-square-foot inpatient facility and five-story, 221,000-square-foot outpatient clinic building, which opens in December. The Methodist West Houston Hospital consists of a 478,500-square-foot full-service hospital, as well as a six-story, 150,000-square-foot medical office building. All available space in Methodist's medical office buildings is committed, and plans for the hospital's next building already are under way. Wolff Companies has been involved in the development of The Texas Medical Center –West Campus from the beginning.
•Officials from Carolinas Medical Center – NorthEast, Kannapolis, N.C., and its parent organization, Carolinas HealthCare System, broke ground in November for a 26,000-square-foot facility estimated at $17 million that will house a freestanding emergency department and support services. The new ED, to be completed by this fall, will have 10 treatment bays and two observation rooms in addition to radiology services and an on-site laboratory. CMC-Kannapolis will operate as an extension of the emergency department at CMC – NorthEast. The project was granted certificate-of-need approval by the state in February 2008.
•Ground was broken in November for a new three-story, 40-bed St. Bernard Parish Hospital in Chalmette, La., to replace the one that was damaged by Hurricane Katrina and later demolished. Design elements were incorporated to help the facility withstand future hurricanes and severe storms. The hospital will provide full health care services including emergency department, intensive-care unit, general surgery, orthopedics, endoscopy, imaging and a catheterization lab. The first hospital to be built there since the hurricane struck in August 2005, it is expected to be completed by March 2012. Gresham, Smith and Partners designed the new facility.
•The historic Atlanta Veterans Administration Medical Center façade will be repaired and restored at an estimated project cost of $5.4 million. The main hospital consists of a two-story base and a 10-story patient tower. Stegenga + Partners will be the local architect and Owners' Advocate will head up the design team that includes Willow Design and Sutton-Kennerly. Willow Design, a service disabled veteran-owned small business, will be the project's lead professional.
•A groundbreaking ceremony was held in December to begin construction on a $394 million replacement Naval Hospital aboard Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton (CA). This is the Department of the Navy's largest American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 project. The new 500,000-square-foot, multilevel facility will replace the current 37-year-old hospital and will enhance the quality and availability of care to sailors, Marines and their family members in the southern California region. The hospital will have 54 inpatient rooms and up to 60 beds, ancillary departments, emergency care, primary care, specialty care clinics, and support spaces and facilities for nonambulatory patients who require stays in excess of 24 hours. Naval Facilities Engineering Command Southwest awarded the design- build contract to Clark Construction Group LLC, and McCarthy Building Companies, a joint venture, in association with architect HKS Inc. The hospital is scheduled to be completed in January 2014 and be ready for operation later that year.
•A new patient tower and central energy plant for Bay Medical Center, Panama City, Fla., was completed in December, under budget and one month ahead of schedule. The five-story, 200,000-square-foot patient tower, designed by Gresham, Smith and Partners, serves as the new main entrance to the facility, houses 144 private beds and replaces the aging medical intensive-care and surgical intensive-care units. The patient tower design features a public courtyard with an outdoor garden that brings light into the center of the building and provides seating off of a new cafeteria. This is the first phase of a full facility master plan developed by GS&P. The second phase will include expansion of the campus parking capacity, expansion of the ED and surgical departments, and renovations to the existing nursing units. Future renovation and expansion of the diagnostic and treatment departments also is planned.
•Construction has begun on the $21 million Adena Cancer Center situated near the northwest wing of the Adena Medical Center in Chillicothe, Ohio. The center will house the latest in cancer care and technological advances, eliminating the need for cancer patients and their families to travel far from home for treatment. Five trees, representing each of the five cancer specialties offered at Adena, were planted near the construction site during the groundbreaking ceremony in September.
•Holy Family Hospital's 60th anniversary was commemorated with the completion of the steel framing of its new emergency center. The 254-bed, nonprofit hospital, located in Methuen, Mass., began this $21 million project in September. The new 21,000-square-foot emergency center will almost double the hospital's capacity to care for emergency patients and will be able to serve up to 54,000 patients annually. Project manager is RF Walsh Collaborative Partners, architect is S/L/A/M Collaborative Inc., and general contractor is Suffolk Construction.
•CenterPointe Hospital, St. Charles, Mo., has broken ground for a $12 million expansion and renovation project. When complete in early 2012, CenterPointe, the region's only private psychiatric hospital, will more than double the size of its adult residential chemical dependency unit, open a new program dedicated to treating geriatric psychiatric patients, and expand its adult and child/adolescent acute care programs. It also will add a new outpatient facility and administrative building, an urgent care center with lab and radiology services, and a freestanding retail pharmacy that will be open to residents in the surrounding community. In addition to the campus redesign, CenterPointe is contributing an additional $2 million and donated land to St. Charles County for a separate road project that runs in front of the hospital. Overseeing design and construction is Clayco, Inc., based in St. Louis.
