(Spirit Lake)– Lakes Regional Healthcare is embarking on a $20 million project to upgrade and expand its Emergency Department. LRH President and CEO Jason Harrington says they have simply outgrown the existing facility…
“Really about five years ago we took on a master facility plan to look at the campus, to look at future growth, to look at what the needs of the community were, and determined there were five priorities, and very quickly the Emergency Department became the top priority. When we built the department, so back in 1993, so 30 years ago, the department was really designed to care for about 6,500 patients where we’re routinely seeing 9,000 patients. And so it quickly became the obvious choice for the first thing we should invest in.”
Harrington says the project will be done in two stages…
“So what will happen first is we’ll build the new construction. Actually that has started. We’ve started the prep work for that, so that’s started. And then once that new construction is built, we’ll go back in and renovate some of the existing space. At the end of the day we really hope to have the ability to double the capacity of that department. So we’re excited about that but as a result of new construction and renovation, that process will take a little bit longer. It will take about 22 months. We recently had construction bids that we received. Those bids came in actually slightly below budget and over half those vendors were local contractors which we’re super excited about.”
Harrington says the goal is to keep any disruptions to as much of a minimum as possible, adding all departments at LRH will remain in operation during construction…
“The expectations we’ve created for the contractors is that throughout construction we would have no fewer than eight ER rooms which is what we currently have, so that will be maintained throughout construction. There will be a parking challenge on the campus but that parking challenge should really be limited to our other team members. Employee parking, other than, I know many people use the through street between 71 and Zenith and that will actually be closed due to construction. But other than that our parking should be the same in terms as it relates to patients.”
As mentioned earlier, the project has a $20 million price tag. Harrington says $7 million of that is coming from cash reserves; $5 million from other financing; and the remaining $8 million through philanthropy…
“We’re committed to doing this, so one way or another we’re going to find a way to do this. Our hope is, and we never have really reached out to the community for support for capital projects, but we think given our summer residents, given people who live in the community, there might be an opportunity for them to look at this project and provide financial support for it. At the end of the day, we determined we need to do this. The outside support to our foundation will really limit the amount of debt we have to take on to make this happen, but we’ve determined there’s a need in the community and we’re going to meet it one way or another. For people in the community that are, you know, would tend to be supportive of and generous toward healthcare, we’re hopeful that that’s part of the funding for the project.”
Tax deductible donations can be made through the Lakes Regional Healthcare Foundation.
As Harrington mentioned earlier, the new Emergency Department is the first step in a long-range plan that includes future improvements to the Physical Therapy, Laboratory, Imaging and Outpatient Departments at LRH.
