Wednesday, Jan. 10, 2001 | 11:35 a.m.
The company that owns Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center and MountainView Hospital plans to build another hospital in Las Vegas, but company officials say those plans are too preliminary to discuss details.
Local medical experts say Las Vegas could use another medical center.
Officials with HCA-The Healthcare Co., Nashville, Tenn., confirmed Tuesday that new hospitals for Las Vegas and Denver are part of the company's long-range strategy.
Jeff Prescott, a spokesman for HCA, said administrators have begun reviewing growth projections and demographics in preparation for determining a site. Prescott said he did not know when the company determined that a new hospital was needed in Las Vegas and he said it's too early to project when ground would be broken on a project.
"It's a lot of braintrusting right now," Prescott said. "We're reviewing growth patterns and where people are moving to determine possible site locations, but it's way too early to think about land acquisition."
He also said it's too early to determine how big the facility would be or how many people would work there.
Local medical experts say a new hospital would be a welcome addition, since the city is continuing to grow and local emergency rooms are constantly busy.
Mark Hemmings, a resource analyst for the state Health Division, said a certificate of need is required to build a hospital in most of Nevada, but since 1991, Clark and Washoe counties have been exempt from that requirement.
"What drives the market in Clark County is a business judgment as to whether there is a market and whether there is sufficient demand," Hemmings said.
Because Las Vegas has been the fastest growing city in the country in the past 10 years, demand has been created for increased medical facilities. He also said the elderly population drives demand and while Nevada does not have large population of senior citizens, it is growing and the proportion of seniors within the population is expanding, Hemmings said.
Because profits drive growth in Clark County, companies that run hospitals keep a close watch on the bottom line.
Recent statistics from the state Division of Health Care Financing and Policy also indicate the six major hospitals in Nevada are in good financial health, with each of them producing profits in 1999.
Sunrise reported the highest level of profits of Las Vegas' medical centers, $29.8 million in 1999, up from $7.1 million the previous year.
Dr. Marietta Nelson, president of the Nevada State Medical Association and an ophthalmologist who has practiced in Las Vegas for 13 years, said the Las Vegas area could use additional hospital beds -- particularly for children -- because of the growth that is occurring in the area.
Las Vegas is one of the few cities where new hospitals are being proposed and built. Improved medical practices and policies to keep patients in beds for shorter periods have resulted in hospitals being closed in other communities.
"Las Vegas seems to be the only place that's building hospitals and not closing them," said Dr. Bernard Feldman, chairman of pediatrics for the University of Nevada School of Medicine. "There's definitely a need for more services."
Feldman said a more pressing problem for local hospitals may be with a shortage of nurses.
"They can't find enough nurses to staff the hospitals," Feldman said, "and there's not enough (graduates) being produced by nursing schools to staff them."
Feldman said the problem is that potential nursing students are being lured into more lucrative fields, including electronics and computer programming. Some interested in medicine are working to become doctors instead.
Marietta and Feldman said it is unclear if any particular Las Vegas neighborhood is underserved, since MountainView is serving the Summerlin area, St. Rose Dominican Hospital's two campuses serve southern Green Valley and Henderson while Lake Mead Hospital Medical Center is available in North Las Vegas.
And a big local competitor to HCA, Universal Health Services, has been studying the possibility of building a new hospital in North Las Vegas, real estate experts say. Universal runs the Valley Health System, which includes Valley, Summerlin and Desert Springs hospitals.
HCA's plans for a new Las Vegas hospital were disclosed this week when co-founder Dr. Thomas Frist Jr. relinquished his chief executive officer title to company President Jack Bovender Jr.
HCA operates more than 200 hospitals in 24 U.S. states, England and Switzerland and has about 168,000 employees worldwide.
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