Health services firm eyes land for fourth area hospital

Diana Sahagun

Monday, Nov. 27, 2000 | 11:18 a.m.

Universal Health Services Inc. is said to be negotiating for land with Station Casinos Inc. in order to build its fourth hospital in the Las Vegas Valley, this one in North Las Vegas.

The King of Prussia, Pa., company -- the third largest hospital company in the country -- operates the Valley Health System in Las Vegas. The system includes Valley, Desert Springs and Summerlin hospitals.

Real estate agent Shawn Lampman told the Sun he is acting as the middleman in negotiations with Station. He said he is brokering a deal that would ultimately net a casino on the Craig Ranch Golf Course and a hospital a few blocks away.

Station has already been granted permission to build a casino on 34 acres near Craig Road and Martin Luther King Boulevard. The company, however, wants to switch locations to what is now the golf course. Station has said if the North Las Vegas City Council approves the swap, it would give up its rights to the original casino site.

That would leave the window open for a new buyer, potentially Universal, Lampman said.

Lampman said during the course of negotiating with the golf course owners, Stimson Enterprises Inc., to sell a portion of the course to Station for a casino, the health care company also expressed interest in building a hospital there.

Because Station was circulating its plan to move, Lampman said, he approached Universal to consider building a hospital on Station's current parcel off Martin Luther King Boulevard.

Although a contract has yet to be finalized, Lampman said Universal is preparing to ask the Planning Commission in the coming weeks for a use permit for a hospital.

The whole proposal will ultimately be contingent on how the City Council votes on the land swap, which is expected in early January.

Station Casinos spokesman Jack Taylor would neither confirm nor deny the negotiations. And representatives from Universal did not return calls seeking comment.

North Las Vegas City Attorney Sean McGowan and Councilwoman Shari Buck said last week they have heard rumors that the two parties are in negotiations, but have yet to see any formal paperwork.

Health officials agree that another hospital in the valley would help alleviate overcrowding experienced at all area hospitals.

Bill Moore, chief executive officer for Lake Mead Hospital in North Las Vegas -- the city's lone hospital -- said volume is steadily increasing, and a hospital to serve the northern section of the city is a must.

Lake Mead typically serves a population within a four-mile radius of the hospital, which often overlaps into the Las Vegas homeless corridor, he said.

Inpatient volume at Lake Mead Hospital, which is owned by Santa Barbara, Calif.-based Tenet Healthcare Corp., is up more than 30 percent and emergency room visits by more than 5 percent since 1995, hospital records show.

About once a month the ER is filled to the brim, and the hospital -- like those throughout the Las Vegas Valley -- is placed on divert status, where patients are moved to the hospital where they can be seen the fastest.

Generally, demand on the emergency room subsides in the summer, but it did not this year.

"Divert status is used when the emergency department is just totally saturated and we cannot move one more patient into the ER," said Carla Hilts, chief nursing officer for Lake Mead.

Moore said the hospital still needs more critical care beds for patients. Of the 198 beds in the hospital, only 20 are strictly for critical care. At times, he said, critical patients must stay in the emergency room for two to three days until space is available.

On a day-to-day basis, inpatient care peaks at 75 percent to 80 percent capacity, with the emergency room at 90 percent capacity, Moore said.

To keep up with the increasing volume, Moore said he is proposing an expansion of the ER.

Ambulance volume, he added, is also on the rise at the hospital.

American Medical Response has added 10 percent more ambulances each year to keep up with growth in the valley, but can't always find beds for patients, Brian Rogers, director of operations for AMR, said.

While nationwide standards for an ambulance to get to a hospital and wait for the patient to be admitted is 23 minutes, AMR's paramedics are often slowed to an hour wait, he said. There often are no immediate hospital beds available, so paramedics must continue treating the patient until one opens up.

Even when a hospital is placed on divert status and ambulances must reroute, the problem is that often every hospital is on divert.

"In that case, no hospital gets a break and we just rotate patients through hospital to hospital," Rogers said.

The solution, as Rogers sees it, is that more hospitals must be built.

Bill Welch, president and CEO of the Nevada Hospital Association, said a new hospital may help keep pace with growth, but bricks and mortar alone won't solve the problem.

The problem in Nevada -- especially in Las Vegas -- is that even with other hospitals expanding, there isn't enough staff to treat the patients. Las Vegas is facing a critical shortage of health care professionals, mainly nurses.

"We can expand facilities to treat patients but it is not facilities that care for patients," Welch said. "It's people who care for patients.

"We have a shortage of health care professionals. Until we do something to address this shortage, continued growth of health care facilities, while they will help, is not by itself going to be able to meet the growing demand."

To analyze what is causing the nursing pinch and to examine ways to combat the problem, the association has commissioned a study on the matter expected to be completed next month.

The study will look at some of the factors driving the nursing shortage, including workplace and hospital environment and more.

"Why is it that people do not as proactively pursue nursing as a career path as they used to?" Welch said the questions will include. "What are some of the barriers within the educational system that challenge our ability to expand the programs? What are strategies being used around the country to address the shortage?"