Mercy Health starts work on $42 million orthopedic hospital

Mercy Fort Smith expects to finish construction of the area’s fi rst orthopedic hospital in October 2014. The 69,000-square-foot facility, shown here in an artist’s rendering, will open with 18 furnished patient rooms, with six more rooms available when needed, a hospital spokesman said.
Mercy Fort Smith expects to finish construction of the area’s fi rst orthopedic hospital in October 2014. The 69,000-square-foot facility, shown here in an artist’s rendering, will open with 18 furnished patient rooms, with six more rooms available when needed, a hospital spokesman said.

FORT SMITH - After years of construction headaches, building is underway on a new, $42 million Mercy Orthopedic Hospital, the Fort Smith area’s first such specialty hospital.

Administrators said Monday they plan a 69,000-square-foot facility with 18 patient rooms at opening. The orthopedic hospital is set to open in October 2014 and add about 100 new jobs.

The two-story building will include a 10,138-square foot rehabilitation clinic, according to a news release from Mercy Fort Smith hospital, which is constructing the facility. It will have space to expand to 36 beds.

“People using Mercy Orthopedic Hospital will be healthy patients scheduling an elective joint replacement,” said Janeen Kueck, executive director of the new hospital. “From the time they come to their preoperative appointment until they walk out the door just days following surgery, everyone will be working to make sure they have a speedy recovery. It’s specialized service designed to get them back to their active lifestyle as quickly as possible.”

The orthopedic hospital is the “final piece of the puzzle” on Mercy Fort Smith’s musculoskeletal campus at Phoenix Avenue and 79th Street, Medical Director Dr. Keith Bolyard said in Monday’s statement. The new facility will attach to an existing ambulatory surgery center.

“We’re already able to take care of children, people who’ve had accidents or injuries and recreational athletes, at this location. Now we’ll add baby boomers in need of surgery for knee, hip and shoulder replacements,” Bolyard said. The campus will employ about 270 people when the orthopedic hospital’s jobs are added, according to a hospital spokesman.

Hospital officials announced plans last September to build the medical facility on a construction site that had plagued builders since 2008.

A doctors group had started an orthopedic hospital there. But in July 2008, workers drilling an elevator shaft discovered an abandoned coal mine below ground. Investors had to spend more than $3 million to stabilize the property and replace the foundation, Dr. Greg Jones, an orthopedic surgeon who was part of that group, said last fall. About that time, the U.S. economy went into recession and bank loans became hard to get.

Except for a partial skeleton of aging steel beams, the old construction site sat vacant until recently at the busy Fort Smith intersection. Mercy Fort Smith decided to clear the site and start over.

Passers-by still can’t see much construction. “Right now, the work going on is underground,” said Larry Young, project manager. But in coming weeks, “people will really be able to see the hospital begin to develop.”

Plans for the building were developed with suggestions from doctors, clinical staff and patients, according to the news release.

The hospital will include a looping hallway for patients to begin walking soon after surgery.

Rooms will have special chairs to help with bedside physical therapy.

Mercy Fort Smith is part of Mercy Health, which was founded 185 years ago by the Sisters of Mercy. Mercy Health is the sixth largest Catholic health care system in the nation, serving more than 3 million people per year, according to the Mercy Fort Smith website. Mercy Heath includes 32 hospitals and 1,700 doctors in Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri and Oklahoma.

Business, Pages 21 on 06/18/2013

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