Delay ends on St. Rose hospital in southwest

Michelle Swafford

Wednesday, Feb. 11, 2004 | 11:13 a.m.

St. Rose Dominican Hospital-San Martin Campus broke ground in the southwest Las Vegas Valley on Tuesday after several years of planning and multiple delays.

The hospital was orginially scheduled to open in the summer of 2004, but it took longer to close on the land deal than the hospital had anticipated because there were multiple sellers involved, officials said.

For example, Nevada Power Co. was one of the land sellers and it had to find a new location for a substation that was planned for the site before the deal closed.

The San Martin Campus will be one of three hospitals in the southwest valley to serve that area's growing population and ease the crowding at other Las Vegas Valley hospitals.

San Martin is scheduled to open in April 2006 with 110 private rooms in a four-story building modeled after St. Rose Dominican Hospital-Siena Campus in Henderson. An additional 90 rooms will be available when the patient load increases, bringing the total to 200 rooms.

The $137 million acute-care services hospital, which is owned by nonprofit hospital operator Catholic Healthcare West in San Francisco, will be financed by a capital drive along with debt in the form of bonds. St. Rose will need to raise $15 million in capital funds and the hospital and CHW will jointly issue bonds to fund the rest of the project.

Bill Fuchs, group vice president at CHW, said it is becoming increasingly difficult for CHW to be a faith-based, nonprofit hospital operator in the nation and in Nevada because the company's mission is to help all patients regardless of their ability to pay.

The increasing number of uninsured patients, which is more than 43 million nationally, is a strain, he said.

But, a positive economic outlook enables the company to build San Martin Campus and continue the company's mission of providing care to everyone who comes to the hospital, Fuchs said. CHW is also building a hospital in fast-growing Gilbert, Ariz., which is a suburb of Phoenix.

San Martin will be CHW's third Las Vegas-area hospital and its 42nd hospital in Nevada, California and Arizona.

State Sen. Dennis Nolan, R-Las Vegas, said San Martin is a much-needed hospital in the Las Vegas Valley. He also said the state Legislature has been working to solve many of the medical crises affecting area hospitals and things are beginning to improve for the health care industry.

Some of the state's medical problems include a shortage of nurses, crowded emergency rooms and a high number of medical malpractice lawsuits, Nolan said.

In addition to the hospital, CHW is building a four-story medical office building adjacent to the hospital, which will house physicians' practices and an outpatient pharmacy. The office building is scheduled break ground in the coming weeks and is scheduled to open in 2005.

The hospital plans to open with fewer beds than its capacity until demand increases, which is typical of new hospitals. In addition to the 110 private rooms San Martin Campus will open with, there will be a reserve of 30 rooms that will be completed, but unequipped until the number of patients increases. The fourth floor will remain unfinished until demand warrants additional rooms. Once all floors are completed, the hospital will offer a total of 200 private rooms.

The Siena Campus finished its fourth floor to accommodate its patient load last fall after opening the hospital more than two years ago.

St. Rose Chief Executive Rod Davis said San Martin's capacity will likely increase slower than the Siena hospital because there are three hospitals within a small radius.

He also said even with San Martin, the local medical industry would likely continue to face a shortage of beds and emergency room bays.

"This will help. If you look at the growth of Las Vegas, it has put pressure on several industries and health care is one of them," Davis said. 'It won't cause the pressure to go away."

He said additional hospitals would need to be built to keep pace with the influx of people, but declined to comment on whether Catholic Healthcare West plans to build additional hospitals after San Martin is completed.

Davis said St. Rose Dominican Hospital-Siena Campus eased the pressure on health care crowding when it opened in Henderson in 2000.