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The $24 million Sevier County Medical Center near De Queen is on standby to begin delivering health care services any day now. The fully staffed facility is waiting to receive its complete stock of medicines before it can go operational.
The newest hospital in Arkansas may not be open for business just yet, but that didn’t stop some premature patients from stopping by for medical treatment.
“After the open house on Dec. 2, a few people came by looking for treatment, non-life-threatening treatment,” said Steve Cole, chairman of the hospital’s seven-member board of governors. “The staff has been training for months, and we know that opening day is coming any minute.”
The hospital looked ready for business to the many visitors who attended the open house and toured the 42,000-SF facility on that rainy Friday last month. Hopes were high that the checklist would be completed for the med center to open not long after the public event.
Patience has become a familiar companion for hospital supporters since the project began taking shape in 2019 and its launch weeks ahead of a 2020 pandemic.
“The cost of our project went up exponentially,” said Lori House, CEO of Sevier County Medical Center. “Supply chain issues affected us greatly. We hoped to be open in June, which slipped to September, and here we are.”
To help compensate for the added cost of developing a rural hospital under a COVID cloud, the Legislative Council of the Arkansas General Assembly awarded $6.25 million in federal rescue funds to Sevier County Medical Center to pay for equipment and supplies.
The new publicly owned, 15-bed hospital was built to replace the old privately owned, financially drowned De Queen Medical Center that closed in February 2019. The return to local ownership marks a full circle do-over to address health care service in the Sevier County area.
The last incarnation of De Queen Medical Center opened as De Queen General Hospital in 1968 as a city-owned 122-bed acute care facility. A series of private owners that began with its 1984 purchase by the health care giant Hospital Corp. of America ended with De Queen Medical Center Inc., led by Miami’s Jorge Perez.
Sevier County voters overwhelmingly approved a 1-cent sales tax increase dedicated to service a $24.2 million bond issue to build, equip and support the new hospital. That tax will stay in place after the bonds are paid off to provide an ongoing financial foundation for operations and upgrades.
Among the new amenities at Sevier County Medical Center: patient beds with turn-assist and fall-assist capabilities that also double as a scale to weigh patients, a magnetic resonance imaging machine and a computed tomography scanner.
“We have the latest and greatest of everything,” House said.
The hospital is allying with CHI St. Vincent Hot Springs to plug into its network of doctors for cardiology service. Orthopedics, pulmonary and urology are among the specialties for future professional ties.
Designed by North Little Rock’s WDD Architects with construction managed by Conway’s Nabholz Construction Corp., the new hospital is a visual showstopper.
“We’re just so pleased,” said Sevier County Judge Sandra Dunn. “The facility is so beautiful and needed. Not having the medical center has been a problem for our sick people who need hospital care to have to go to Texarkana or Nashville.”
By mid-March, construction should be complete on two helipads and supporting structures on the south side of the hospital grounds for Air Evac Lifeteam of O’Fallon, Missouri.
The closure of the old hospital resulted in 100 lost jobs. The headcount of medical center staff stands at 118.
“We talked with our staffers to look around when they go shopping at Walmart or the grocery store and see the people,” House said. “These are your bosses. This is their hospital.”
Expectations are that patient use during the next five years will prompt construction of a medical office building to house supporting physicians and the addition of general surgery.
Hospital boosters looked at reclaiming the old hospital site in De Queen but decided to build on 18 acres about 3 miles north of De Queen.
The reason?
To qualify as a certified Medicare critical access hospital, Sevier County Medical Center had to be located more than 35 miles from the nearest hospital.
In an era of no waivers on this point, that meant that even if the old hospital site was free of its significant financial baggage the property couldn’t be used because it was too close to McCurtain Memorial Hospital in Idabel, Oklahoma, and Howard Memorial Hospital in Nashville.
That now unbending 35-mile rule required the selection of a site north of De Queen, somewhere along U.S. 71 for practical transportation reasons.
Building outside De Queen also required extra infrastructure cost. Hooking into a reliable rural water system was no problem, but wastewater service required laying a pipeline and unforeseen cost.
“We had to spend $2 million to tie into the city of De Queen system,” Cole said. “We went back to the Quorum Court, and they reimbursed us for that.”
To address concerns of mismanagement and financial chicanery related to past hospital operations, an important function of Sevier County Medical Center was outsourced. The role of chief financial officer is handled through the Horne accounting firm in Conway, led by Laura Gillenwater, a senior manager; and Tim Hall, accounting manager and a former chief financial officer at Universal Health Services.
“The things that we’ve said since the beginning is we’re going to set up a structure that is fully transparent to account and manage as transparently as possible,” Cole said. “We’re not sure that has always happened in the past. That’s why we partnered with the Horne firm.”
He fortified himself after licensing approval by the state Health Department was delayed by a couple of weeks because the nurse call system failed inspection last month because of a fried motherboard and bad wiring. Cole remembered the happy gathering of expectant folks walking around and looking at their new hospital at the Dec. 2 open house.
“It did my heart good, I can tell you that,” he said. “The number of people. There were so many people at the open house. Crowded. That’s a good thing. This doesn’t work at all if people don’t use it.”
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