Assembly Gets Update on SEARHC Project

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Category: News

Created on Tuesday, 10 December 2024 15:39

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By SHANNON HAUGLAND
Sentinel Staff
    Work is on schedule for the new Mt. Edgecumbe Medical Center that will be twice the size of the current hospital, the Assembly was told at a recent meeting.
    “Construction is moving very well – I’m very excited about the pace of construction,” Hospital Administrator Bill Spivey told the Assembly. “I’m always amazed at how quickly things are coming along.”
    The facility, budgeted at $410 million, is scheduled to open in the fall of 2025, SEARHC officials said today.
    Spivey, a 20-year resident of Sitka, was SEARHC system director for rehab services before being named administrator in August, and assigned to “shepherd our move into the new hospital.”
    In his 15-minute update he reported on SEARHC activities the past year, showed floor plans of the new facility, and talked about what the public can expect when it’s opened.
    He discussed the mission of SEARHC as Alaska Native people working in partnership with the 26 communities in which the Native-owned nonprofit provides medical services.
    “Tonight, I want to highlight that word ‘partnership,’ which is something I’m very excited about and very interested in doing: working with this Assembly and with the members of the community in partnership as we move forward with this project,” Spivey said at the November 19 meeting.
    In addition to the Mt. Edgecumbe hospital, SEARHC operates a 19-bed long-term care facility in the old Sitka Community Hospital building, where it also runs the Mountainside physical rehabilitation clinic. Regionwide SEARHC has 140 health service providers, providing 120,000 primary care visits, 72,000 behavioral health visits, and 35,000 physical rehab visits a year, “in addition to many, many other services.”
    In Sitka, those include an opioid treatment center and outpatient services at Sitka Medical Center.
    Sitka visits for primary care and behavioral care comprise about a third of the regionwide figure, a SEARHC spokesman said today.
    The consortium received funding through the Indian Health Service in 2021 for the new 234,528-square-foot hospital, double the size of the existing building. The diagrams and floor layouts can be viewed on the city’s YouTube channel.
    “The building will be open seven days a week, and all the services currently provided will be available throughout the week,” Spivey told the Assembly. “There will be no significant change in services from where we are at MEMC.”
    Patient and visitor parking will be increased, patient rooms will be single occupancy, with “adequate space for visitors.”
    At the meeting, Assembly member Thor Christianson asked about the way the floors will be numbered. At present the hospital “ground floor” is the level of the front entrance, and the “first floor” is next one up.
    “Are you still going to keep the first floor as the ground floor; are you going to have somebody there going, ‘No, you’re not on the right floor, you need to go up one?’” Christianson asked.
    “I asked that question myself,” Spivey said. There generally won’t be someone directing people at the entrance, but the patient access and experience teams are close to the entrance to offer help.
    Another question was about what was going to happen to the present building.
    “That’s a great question I’ve been forbidden to even try to answer. We’re not to that place yet. Lots of ideas,” Spivey said.
    Assembly member Scott Saline asked Spivey if he had information on the return on investment for the cost of drilling for vertical ground source loops for the heat pump heating system.
    “Do you know how long that’s going to be before you get paid back for incurring that expense and start pumping heat for free?” he asked.
    Spivey said he’d anticipated that question: “Ten years is the number.”
    “This is one of the things I’m actually pretty excited about,” he said. “The heat loop system has been designed to assist us with decreasing the electrical demand for this facility. There are 66 wells drilled over 350 vertical feet underneath the parking lot that will provide us with about 30 percent of our total electric needs, that and $200,000 of fuel savings for generator use. And 10 years was the number I was given.”
    The primary contractor on the MEMC project is Davis Constructors and Engineers. A SEARHC official told the Sentinel that the contractor is ensuring the project stays on schedule and is aligned with the organization’s “high standards for quality and safety.”