Alaska Journal of Commerce / AJOC-January-29 2012 / Hospitals expanding across the state

Hospitals expanding across the state

Correction: This story has been updated to reflect the correct hospital that Dowl HKM is working on in Nome

Alaska’s medical facility expansions have boomed over the last few years. Consensus among hospital administrators reveals that current facilities cannot adequately serve expanding populations. As such, a number of hospital projects have recently gotten under way or have been announced.

One of the most prominent expansion projects is with Providence Health and Services in Anchorage. The renovations under way will be one of the campus’ most ambitious ever. The project is called Generations in recognition of the facilities’ purpose to the community for future generations, as well as the focus on both ends of the life cycle.

The mini-tower currently under construction on the south side of the campus will expand and renovate the newborn intensive care unit, renovating the labor and delivery unit and building a new postpartum unit plus a prenatal unit.

The units have been using the open space standard for years but will be updated to include private rooms and other additional space for families.

“So for all of those reasons we’re updating, we’re enlarging the newborn intensive care unit to accommodate the growth that we think will happen in terms of just volume as Alaska’s population grows through this decade,” said Dr. Richard Mandsager, chief executive of Providence Medical Center.

Besides the newborn care areas, an additional operating room is being built while nine others are being renovated in order to be able to accommodate modern technological equipment. The new room will be a hybrid cardiovascular surgery room to house a complex cardiovascular and cardiology work and even allow such specialties to be done in the same space.

That hybrid room is about to undergo simulation testing before being put into use in February.

Infrastructure upgrades within Generations include the pharmacy, sterile processing and material management for receiving. Mandsager said these conditions are needed due to the growth of both the campus and the community. They are also needed to be able to manage the more advanced technologies that wouldn’t work within the old spaces.

For example, a standard Providence operating room for complex orthopedic or neurosurgical cases are 400 square feet but should be at least 600 square feet to accommodate the necessary equipment. The new hybrid room will be the biggest at 900 square feet.

“These were the parts of the projects and the needs of the campus that were prioritized as the highest need and why we have gone ahead with construction,” Mandsager said.

The other part of the Generations construction will be replacement extended care facilities for long-term residents. This part will have the capacity for 96 such residents with each house built for 12 of them. The new houses will have private bedrooms and bathrooms for each resident plus common living spaces and central areas for necessities, like food preparation and physical therapy.

Construction started in 2011 and will be completed in intervals over the next few years. The operating rooms will be completed in 2013 due to the complexities of taking them down and bring them back online. The newborn intensive care unit and labor delivery are the most complicated in terms of phasing and maintaining current capacity throughout construction so will be done in 2014. The postpartum unit will be done this fall. The resident care houses will likely open in 2013.

Generation is the medical center’s biggest project since a large part of the main hospital was worked on in the early 1990s. There have been several other big projects between these, such as an emergency department, cancer center, an inventory surgery center and other offices.

“This set of projects we have under way now are financially more money and bigger in scope,” Mandsager said.

The hospital parts of Generations will cost $150.3 million and the long-term care houses will be $62.5 million. A large part of these costs will be covered by $122.72 million in tax-exempt “conduit” revenue bonds from the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority.

As a not-for-profit hospital, these renovations go toward continually reinvesting funds into the community and looking ahead for future needs.

New hospitals

The big hospitals aren’t the only ones getting big changes, however. The Chief Andrew Isaac Health Center in Fairbanks Norton Sound hospital in Nome is getting a new 150,000 square foot replacement hospital. Senior project manager Nick Francis of Dowl HKM said the project is about 85 percent done and must be completed before the scheduled December move-in.

Once online, the new building will be an 18-bed inpatient facility. There will be plenty of outpatient services too, like dental, physical therapy, respiratory, optometry and others.

“The old one is severely outdated. It’s too small to service the community,” Francis said. “It should have been replaced years ago.”

He said the total project value is $168 million. The project is being helped with American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds.

Like Providence, work for the elderly is being added. Only in this case it’s a separate, state-funded project. A 19-room skilled nursing wing is being added and will connect to the hospital via a bridge. Francis said it will be completed at the same time as the hospital if the second half of the state funding comes through.

“It’s critical that we get approval this year,” he said.

The hospital is being built in conjunction with Indian Health Services. Neeser Construction is the contractor. Kumin Associates out of Anchorage is the lead architect while Mahlum out of Seattle is the medical architect.

Besides the construction, Francis said a statewide request for proposals have gone out for three pieces of commissioned art.

2012 will also be an important year for hospitals to generate construction funds. Wrangell Medical Center has received most of funding for a $30 million replacement hospital and long-term care facility. Development and Quality Director Mari Selle-Rea said the funding came from various sources but mostly from U.S. Department of Agriculture Rural Development. Other funding support comes from the hospital itself, Rasmuson Foundation, Alaska Mental Health Trust Authority and the state of Alaska.

Mari Selle-Rea said the current hospital is outdated and inadequate. The new space will also accommodate a CT scanner along with six additional long-term care beds.

Ground could be broken this summer depending on how quickly the funding balance can be secured.

Some of the other hospital projects this year include a $1.47 million expansion for Petersburg Medical Center’s clinic and a replacement hospital for Samuel Simmonds Memorial Hospital.

Jonathan Grass can be reached at jonathan.grass@alaskajournal.com.

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