| |
Posted Oct 1, 2008, 9:58 PM
|
|
Closed account
|
|
Join Date: Dec 2006
Posts: 786
|
|
And now some good news... 
Quote:
Trinity touts U.S. 280 location as best choice; Daniel, city officials rejoice
Wednesday, October 01, 2008
ANNA VELASCO and JOSEPH D. BRYANT
News staff writers
Trinity Medical Center officials said Tuesday that relocating to the former HealthSouth hospital on U.S. 280 will be far less costly, better for the environment and accessible to more people than the Irondale site where the eastern Birmingham hospital already has state approval to move.
Trinity, the city of Birmingham and Daniel Corp., owner of the half-built hospital, dropped a bombshell on Irondale and the health care community Tuesday when they announced Trinity's intention to abandon plans to build a new hospital at Grants Mill Road and Interstate 459 and to complete instead the old HealthSouth hospital, nine miles away.
Birmingham Mayor Larry Langford has offered tax incentives worth $55 million to clinch the deal and keep Trinity, formerly Montclair Baptist Medical Center, from moving outside the city limits.
"It would have been a travesty to put a wrecking ball to this facility," Langford said at a midday press conference in front of the impressive but empty shell of a hospital.
Trinity won Certificate of Need approval in May to spend $316 million to build and equip an Irondale hospital, but hospital officials said the real figure would be $400 million or more because of the increase in construction costs since the application was filed in November 2006.
Trinity started the approval process over Tuesday, saying the new project would be more economical. Trinity will spend $205 million to complete the former HealthSouth facility and $70 million to equip the 424-bed hospital, officials told state health regulators in a hand-delivered letter of intent. That's in addition to the sale price, which Daniel and Community have not disclosed yet.
The U.S. 280 site also is in the heart of a huge corridor of growth with twice the population base as the Irondale location, said Wayne Smith, chief executive officer of Community Health Systems, Trinity's parent company.
"This site works so much better for us," Smith said.
The 154-acre Irondale site is close to the Cahaba River and has portions that can't be developed. The old HealthSouth hospital is also close to the river, but the exterior is already built. The 13-story hospital covers less ground than the original designs for the Irondale hospital, which was envisioned as only a few stories.
HealthSouth's 40%:
Talks between Daniel Corp. and Langford began in March, when Daniel bought the entire 103-acre HealthSouth campus, including the hospital, for $43.5 million. HealthSouth retains a 40 percent stake in the building and will get a portion of the proceeds from the sale price.
The hospital, once dubbed the "digital hospital," was the brainchild of former HealthSouth CEO Richard Scrushy and was to be a model of computerization in hospital care.
HealthSouth sank at least $200 million into construction but halted work in 2003 amid an accounting scandal that threatened HealthSouth's future. Scrushy was forced out, and the company tried to unload the building to a hospital operator for years, to no avail.
Talks between Trinity and Daniel began about three months ago, according to both sides.
Trinity has options to buy 14 acres where the hospital sits and a parking deck would be built, and an additional 13½ acres behind the hospital, where it wants to develop doctors' office buildings to complete the medical campus.
Trinity officials said the city's inducement was key to the deal.
Langford's incentive package is similar to one he structured earlier this year for a new Children's Hospital. The Trinity-Daniel deal involves up to $55 million in rebates from the city over 20 years on a portion of occupational, real-estate and sales taxes generated by the project. Of that amount, $40 million would be dedicated to the hospital and medical campus development and $15 million for the rest of the Daniel campus.
"We crunched all of the numbers," Langford said. "All the pieces of the puzzle work to the advantage of Daniel Corp., CHS (Community Health Systems) and the city."
The City Council must approve the agreement. From the appearance of most council members at the press conference, after recessing their regular meeting and heading to the hospital site by MAX bus, Langford will get a majority behind the concept.
"This is a win for the city of Birmingham. This is a win for the region," said Councilwoman Carol Duncan, who campaigned against the hospital's move to Irondale. "I fought very hard to keep Trinity in Birmingham, and now that we're keeping it in Birmingham, I'm quite happy."
Logic of Irondale site:
The HealthSouth hospital has had many hospital suitors but no takers until now. In fact, Trinity's two previous owners took turns investigating the location before settling on Irondale.
Smith said that was before Community bought majority ownership of Trinity last year. Community then bought out Baptist Health System's 35 percent stake at the end of June and became full owner.
Smith said he never understood the logic of the Irondale site, but Community came in too late during the first state approval process to switch to a new site.
One of the frequent complaints about the HealthSouth hospital has been that despite its attractiveness, it was poorly designed for convenient medical care. The emergency department, for example, is on the second floor and the bottom floor designed for retail.
Smith said Community has been working closely with Daniel to remedy any problems.
"We have a solution for the ER," he said. "It's clearly our intention to make our emergency services accessible."
Smith said he thought the project shouldn't be opposed by competitors because it's less expensive and would serve more people.
But it's also closer to key markets for Brookwood Medical Center and St. Vincent's Birmingham.
Both Brookwood and St. Vincent's have signaled their immediate desires to build free-standing emergency departments just a few miles from the former HealthSouth hospital, in Greystone in north Shelby County. Those hospitals are likely to oppose each other's projects as well as Trinity's new plans.
Brookwood has appealed Trinity's initial state approval in circuit court.
E-mail: avelasco@bhamnews.com
|
|
|
|
Prev
I'm glad September is over.
Linear Mode
