"This is a tremendous undertaking for a small city and the first entirely new hospital in Alaska for some time," said Valdez Regional Health Authority CEO Jim Culley.

Valdez voters approved a $19 million revenue bond proposition in October 2002, and the City of Valdez is providing the additional $6 million to build the hospital, Culley said.

Work on the city-owned facility began last April and the original plan was to have the hospital operational by November of this year. Culley said it now appears that it will ready by August.

The facility will replace a derelict building that was owned by the state until the government abandoned the structure in 2001. "Since then we've been stuck in this 1967 building that wasn't designed to be a hospital," Culley said.

The new hospital will have 11 acute care beds and 10 long-term care beds, which will be the first long-term care facilities in Valdez, he said.

A local group of private physicians staffs the facility and currently operates on a basis of two and a half full-time equivalent positions, Culley said. With the new facility on the way, they are in the process of recruiting another full-time physician for the community.

Culley said Valdez residents will soon have access to a new CT diagnostic scanner at the hospital, thanks to a $300,000 grant from the Denali Commission.

"Right now, with anybody that might need a CT scan, we basically have to evacuate them out by air, which can be quite expensive. So that will be a tremendous improvement," he said.

The hospital board has applied for additional commission funding to upgrade a smaller clinical building that will be integrated into the new hospital, Culley said.

The new hospital will have its own dietary service and a laundry room, which will replace services now provided under contract with Providence Alaska Medical Center in Anchorage, he said.

The general contractor for the project is Kansas City-based J.E. Dunn Construction.