In the coming months, members of the hospital board’s building committee will start a push to update city officials and the public in detail about plans for a new hospital.
The medical center’s nine-person building committee has spent the last several months reviewing existing plans for the hospital, and aims to bring those plans, as well as information about potential changes, to the borough assembly and staff, medical center CEO Marla Sanger told the hospital’s board of directors at their regular Wednesday meeting.
Committee members include facilities directors, board members and CEOs from the hospital and Alaska Island Community Services (AICS), as well as borough manager Jeff Jabusch and CFO Dana Strong, who provides services to both medical establishments. The committee has met at least four times over the last few months.
The committee has decided to re-examine virtually every aspect of the building design, Sanger said.
“We actually opened everything back up, which was the right thing to do,” she said. “That was a decision from the whole committee. We’re not bound by the design that was there.”
Among the primary concerns for the new hospital is a desire to expand and improve living conditions for the hospital’s long-term care residents, Sanger said.
“One of the things, the big emphasis that I hear every time is that the long-term care residents need a beautiful place that is very functional and pleasant,” she said. “We’re placing a higher priority on that.”
The planning process recently received a boost from PeaceHealth facilities vice president Gary Hall, who participated in an on-site meeting with building committee members, Sanger said.
“Just walking around out there and looking at how the one building would sit with the other one created a lot more ideas about how we could take that concept further and create really what would feel like a common integrated healthcare delivery campus,” she said.
This integrated healthcare campus could include shared space with Tideline Clinic and AICS.
Hall is preparing drawings for the possible facility with an architect, which will be included with information eventually provided to the borough assembly, though several decisions remain about the facility, such as whether to include a second floor and how much square footage is required to meet the facility’s needs without being excessive. Officials said they had not conducted a feasibility study for any potential plan.
In addition to constructing a shared facility with AICS, the hospital aims to take advantage of underutilized space at the existing clinic, Sanger said.
“If we were to be able to use some of that space effectively and we can work out what would be the legal requirements to do that, and it doesn’t cause them any trouble, that opens up all kinds of possibilities in terms of space and what would be needed,” she said.
Public and official interest about the state of the hospital plans is motivating the new drive to provide information to borough staff and eventually the public, Sanger said.
“We’re in a time of year when people are reflecting back on where are we at,” she said. “We’re getting questions, including from (U.S. Sen. Mark Begich’s) staff, so we’re gonna create an update for them, but I want to bring it to the borough first. Hopefully sometime in the next month, some of us will provide a brief presentation to the borough assembly.”
Previous plans for a new facility were effectively shelved after a political struggle over those plans ended with the termination of previous hospital CEO Noel Rae and the recall of the majority of the previous hospital board, as well as high-profile public lawsuits.
The building committee will provide opportunities for public comment, in addition to welcoming public comment at their regular meetings, officials said.
The new push to release information and solicit public feedback has been slowed not by concerns about public reaction, but because plans for the new building remain very tenuous, Sanger said.
“That (public reaction) doesn’t concern me in the least,” she said. “I just want to try to be real transparent and not get people all excited thinking that it’s gonna happen tomorrow or that we have all the approvals that we need. I just want to be really honest with our communication.”
The push will start with the borough assembly in order to build consensus and maintain effective communication, said board member Woody Wilson.
“It’s important that we deal with the borough assembly first, so that this doesn’t look like we’re going ahead of everybody else,” he said.
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