Local hospitals’ boom defies national trend

Art Nadler

Thursday, Oct. 29, 1998 | 11:10 a.m.

While many hospitals across the country have instituted hiring freezes and shelved renovation and building plans, medical facilities in Clark County are growing by leaps and bounds.

Hospital occupancy rates in the county have increased annually from 64.5 percent in 1993 to 69.6 percent in 1997, the state Division of Health Care Financing and Policy recently reported. By comparison, the American Hospital Association cited the national average in 1996 to be only 65 percent.

Sunday newspaper advertisements this month support what many hospital administrators freely admit: If you are in the health-care field, come to Nevada. There's plenty of work available.

Desert Springs Hospital, for example, is currently advertising for registered nurses in all units -- full time, part time and per diem. Valley Hospital also has openings for respiratory therapists, sterile processing technicians, nursing staff secretaries, a medical records director and registered nurses.

"Admissions have gone up 13 percent over last year," said Bruce Wiggins, chief executive officer of Valley Health System, the parent company of Valley Hospital and Medical Center, Desert Springs Hospital and Summerlin Hospital Medical Center.

"The Las Vegas community clearly has a shortage of primary-care physicians. At Valley and Desert Springs, we are doing between 1,300 and 1,500 open-heart operations a year."

St. Rose Dominican Hospital in Henderson has also joined the building frenzy. It opened a 94,000-square-foot Parkway Medical Plaza last month. The three-story facility, on the northeast corner of Green Valley Parkway and Lake Mead Drive, features the hospital's first entry into the urgent-care field.

Another clinic will open in late December at the Hartwell Medical Center, near Warm Springs Road and Eastern Avenue. It will offer diagnosis services with a staff of primary-care physicians and specialists.

St. Rose last week opened its St. Therese Center, 67 E. Lake Mead Drive. The facility provides emotional counseling to HIV/AIDS patients and their families.

"I think the need is strong and the demand for services from St. Rose are extremely high," Shauna Cuddy, director of communications for the hospital, said. "The hospital admittance rates are at a high point from just a year ago."

To serve the southeast part of Southern Nevada, St. Rose plans to open a new 139-bed hospital at the corner of Lake Mead Drive and Eastern Avenue by early 2000. The $85 million first phase will be followed by a 160-bed, $100 million second phase scheduled to open in 2006.

University Medical Center added three new Quick Care Clinics this summer by opening facilities in Henderson, on West Craig Road and on West Charleston Boulevard.

UMC also opened the Ernst F. Lied Ambulatory Care Center, 1524 Pinto Lane. The facility offers pediatric and adult primary and speciality care.

"New physicians are coming into the area constantly," Joe Dylag, senior associate administrator for UMC's ambulatory clinics, said. "We have a commitment from the town board in Laughlin to open a clinic in the summer of 1999."

Dylag said each of UMC's Urgent Care Clinics have 15 employees -- a physician, nurses and X-ray and laboratory technicians.

"Most markets have an average growth rate of 2 to 3 percent a year," Dylag said of hospitals across the country. "We are growing by 5 to 6 percent."

Stacy Jennings, acting president of the Nevada Association of Hospitals and Health Systems, says hospitals in Southern Nevada are struggling, as are most other businesses, to keep up with the phenomenal growth. And she doesn't see it slowing down anytime soon.

"A lot of hospitals only have 60 percent of their beds filled," Jennings said. "Hospitals are closing and reorganizing -- but that's not happening at all in Las Vegas."