As the Tri-City area continues to grow so does our need for quality medical facilities. We are happy to share this exciting news and look forward to seeing the new facility. If you have any questions about the development around the new hospital please contact one our Windermere Tri-Cities agents in our Kennewick location at 509.783.8811. Read below to see more details on the new hospital.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE For more information:
April 20, 2012 Heidi Taffera, (425) 269-9981
KGH COMMISSIONERS ANNOUNCE CONSTRUCTION OF NEW HOSPITAL TO BEGIN
KGH Commissioners today announced financing has been secured to begin construction on a new hospital at its Southridge campus, which will provide the community with a much-needed, long-anticipated new facility. The project is expected to begin next week and take up to 24 months.
“Our community has waited a long time for this announcement, and we know they are as excited by this as we are,” said Commission President Jim Mefford. “The Tri-Cities community continues to grow at a rapid rate. Plans for hundreds of new homes, apartments, a commercial district, retail and upscale restaurants and a multimillion-dollar sports complex in Southridge confirms the need for more health services close to home. Our new 74-bed hospital at Southridge, complemented by our 27-bed facility at Auburn, will ensure that we will be able to continue to provide quality health care services to this growing community close to home.”
The new Southridge campus also will house a medical office building with physician offices that will open shortly before the main hospital. The hospital and medical office building will occupy about half of KGH’s 40-acre Southridge property, which is located at the center of where much of the Tri-Cities’ future growth is expected to happen. With convenient highway access, the campus can be easily reached by people living in Benton and Franklin Counties, as well as Northeast Oregon.
The new hospital will be three stories high with nearly 200,000 sq. feet of space, replacing an outdated, cramped facility that is 60 years old. By updating and expanding its hospital facilities, KGH will be able to accommodate new technologies and replace overcrowded patient rooms with single-occupancy rooms. The size of the emergency department will increase from 14 to 27 rooms, the intensive care unit will more than double in size from six to 14 beds and surgery will have six rooms, in addition to the three surgical rooms that will remain in operation on the Auburn campus. The oncology and cardiology departments will be relocated to Southridge, as well as the Joint Replacement Center.
The Southridge campus is just three miles from KGH’s Auburn facility, which will continue to house its recently remodeled Family Birth Center and an expanded urgent care center. Current doctors will remain onsite, as will administrative offices.
KGH also operates a third campus at the Medical Mall near the Toyota Center and Vista Field in West Kennewick. The Medical Mall offers ambulatory services, physician practices, outpatient surgery, as well as OP imaging, a retail pharmacy and a new, state-of-the-art Endoscopy Center.
The hospital is expected to cost up to $112 million to finance, construct and equip. It will employ about 250 family-wage construction jobs, with about 80 percent of those jobs going to workers living in the Tri-Cities area, and generate more than $7.6 million in local wages. Once built, the new hospital will create an additional 100 permanent, direct healthcare jobs. Currently, KGH employs 1,179 people, with an annual impact on the community of $87 million which includes payroll, benefits and taxes.
The new hospital facility is just one aspect of how KGH is growing its healthcare services to meet the community’s long-term needs. Over the past four years, KGH has hired 36 new physicians at KGH Physician Clinics, nearly doubling its medical staff to 80. KGH currently has over 270 providers on staff. It has expanded services by systematically developing a network of urgent care and walk-in clinics, which served 40,693 patients in 2011. Its walk-in, after-hours pediatric clinic – the only one in the area – alone served 2,684 patients last year.
“We are excited about the plans to move forward,” said Commissioner Wanda Briggs. “Our new hospital, along with all the other services we offer, ensures that our community will have access to the quality healthcare it needs and deserves. This project also will continue to ensure that residents in the Tri-Cities will have a choice of healthcare providers and we believe that is of great benefit to our area. We are so proud of the partnership we have with our district residents, and the support they offer us.”
“KGH has a compelling growth story,” said Tom Baker, Chairman of C.D. Smith Construction, Inc., the general contractor and financier for the Southridge project. “The community is rapidly growing and demanding availability of quality, health care services close to home so people don’t leave the community to receive care. We recognize that KGH needs to expand in order to continue to deliver quality care to the community. From the beginning, we knew KGH represented an attractive project management and investment opportunity. It has a solid track record in the region, not only in terms of management and operations, but also in its deep relationships with the community it serves. We are pleased to participate in this exciting project.”
C.D. Smith Construction Inc., founded in 1936, is a large privately held construction firm with an area of expertise in building state-of-the-art healthcare facilities nationwide.
“We developed a financing structure that allows KGH to own the hospital operations and the hospital license. We will lease the building from the private investor group and have the opportunity to buy it in 10 years. That is what we intend to do. This is a model that works well for us and one that we can afford. It also allows us to free up capital to enhance services at the same time,” said Glen Marshall CEO at KGH.
Private sector financing is commonly used in the health care industry from publicly traded hospitals to community-owned facilities. KGH worked with Healthcare Development Partners, one of the nation’s largest, privately held, full-service, design-build, healthcare real estate companies, to secure a private investor group to finance and build the hospital. HDP has successfully developed more than $1.5 billion in healthcare real estate for a variety of clients.
Sincerely,
Glen Marshall
Chief Executive Officer
Kennewick General Hospital
900 South Auburn Street
Kennewick, WA 99336
Work: 509.586.5827
Cell: 509.378.9347
Fax: 509.586.5892
email: glen.marshall@kphd.org
web: kennewickgeneral.com