Third St. Rose hospital opening now set for 2005

Grace Leong

Thursday, Dec. 19, 2002 | 11:06 a.m.

Catholic Healthcare West says it plans to open its third St. Rose Dominican hospital in the Las Vegas Valley in late 2005, one year later than planned because of delays in assembling land.

The $190 million, 200-bed hospital, to be built on 40 acres at Warm Springs Road between Buffalo and Durango Drives, is now expected to break ground between mid- to late-summer 2003, a year behind the initial estimated schedule.

"We had land in escrow. But that didn't close until June or July of 2002 and part of that delay was because of complications that arose during the assembling of that 40-acre property from its five or six different sellers," said St. Rose Dominican President Rod Davis.

"One of the sellers was Nevada Power, and the parcel they were selling us was close to the center of the property and had a substation planned for it," he said. "Some additional time was required for Nevada Power to determine a new site for the substation before they could sell the land to us."

While competitors Universal Health Services and HCA Inc. are well under way with construction on hospitals in the same area of the southwest Las Vegas Valley, Davis stressed it isn't unusual for projected opening dates to change.

"The original projected date was only an estimate," he said.

The four-story hospital will have 140 beds to 150 beds initially, with space for 60 more to be added. A medical office building for physician practices will be adjacent to the new hospital on the 40-acre site.

Davis said the St. Rose hospital chain is expanding in the southwest -- one of the fastest growing areas in the Valley -- because the shortage of nurses and beds is made more acute by the fact that the southwest area is more distant from hospitals than any other location in the valley.

"From 2001 through 2006, the population in the southwest valley is expected to grow at over 17 percent," he said. "By 2005, the population living within 10 miles of third St. Rose hospital is expected to exceed 700,000."

Meanwhile, St. Rose Dominican Hospital-Siena Campus in Henderson is completing the construction of a 53,214 square-foot fourth story, which will add 65 beds to the existing 148-bed hospital by October 2003.

"We recently opened a nursery for high-risk babies and added two more operating rooms to the existing six. We're also building a second C-section room at Sienna," Davis said. "At St. Rose de Lima hospital, we're renovating up to 80 in-patient rooms and updating our cardiac catheterization or heart studies lab."

In the meantime, HCA, the nation's largest for-profit hospital chain, plans to open in January 2004 a third Las Vegas hospital, the 245-bed Southern Hills Hospital at the intersection of Fort Apache and Sunset Roads.

"A medical office building for physician services will be connected to the hospital by an attached bridge. The facilities include nine operating rooms, a 30-bed emergency unit department and 25 beds for outpatient surgery recovery," said Ann Lynch, spokeswoman for HCA-owned Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center.

Sunrise, a 688-bed hospital, is preparing to open a 42-bed intensive care unit within days and plans to break ground on a $75 million expansion for the Sunrise Children's hospital in January 2003, she said.

And Universal Health Services, a big Las Vegas operator with three local hospitals operating as the Valley Health Systems, said its fourth hospital, the 176-bed Spring Valley Hospital at Rainbow Boulevard and Hacienda Avenue, will open in Fall 2003.

Mike Tymczyn, marketing director for Valley Health System, said its Summerlin Hospital is opening a 36-bed unit for maternity recovery and a nursery for high-risk babies. Universal is also building an $8 million three-story addition to Summerlin's North Tower.

The project, when completed, will add 90 beds to the 199-bed Summerlin Hospital, he said.

Universal is also planning a fifth acute care hospital at Craig Road and Commerce Street in North Las Vegas, but hasn't broken ground yet.

Marc Jordan, principal planner for City of North Las Vegas, said Universal is approved for a special use permit for the area and is planning to build a 180-bed hospital.

Tenet Healthcare Corp., which owns a 198-bed Lake Mead Hospital in North Las Vegas, is expecting to complete a renovation of its emergency unit in February 2003. The expansion will add seven beds to its existing 13-bed emergency unit, said Annette Kinsman, Lake Mead's director of business development.

Tropical and Losee LLC, a partnership of David Crowe, a Las Vegas veterinarian and two developers, John McDonald and Fletcher Majors, said it is planning to open a $140 million 208-bed Meadows Hospital and two medical office buildings at Tropical Parkway and Losee Road in North Las Vegas in Fall 2004.

The site plan of the 14-acre project was approved in July 2002 by the City of North Las Vegas, but hasn't broken ground yet because the developers are still in the process of raising funds.

The developers are now trying to secure financing.

"We're hoping to start construction in Summer 2003," said Ernie Libman, chief executive of Meadows Hospital and chief executive of Lake Mead Hospital from 1991-1999. "We're running six months behind our architectural planning schedule because we got a lot of physicians and nurses involved in the planning process.

"We got feedback about what physicians anticipate happening to the medical community, which are the best vendors to provide medical equipment, how to make the layout of the intensive care and coronary care units more physician- and patient-friendly. We also had input from the nurses about their nursing stations' design," he said. "The purpose of this exercise is to help make the layout of the medical facility more efficient and boost (worker) productivity."

McDonald said the 14-acre hospital project is part of a 40-acre site that's slated for developments including a senior apartment complex, a 100-room hotel, a restaurant, a nursing home, a bank and a drug store.