PROVIDENCE – A state council voted 6-5 to approve a certificate of need for Kent Hospital’s proposed ambulatory surgery center, a $15.1 million project that President and CEO Sandra Coletta has said would bring long-overdue upgrades to the hospital’s surgical programs.
Kent’s plan calls for a new two-story building on the Warwick campus, attached to the hospital. One floor will house four operating rooms and three procedure rooms; the other floor would be used for private physician offices. The building is slated to open in October 2011.
The Health Services Council’s decision is a key milestone, but there’s still one more step before the project can proceed: Dr. David R. Gifford, director of the R.I. Department of Health, has until this week to sign off on the council’s recommendation, or modify or reject it.
But Gifford generally follows the council’s advice, and in a news release, Coletta was upbeat.
“This project is vital to the long-term economic well being of both Kent Hospital and the state,” she said. “It will enable the hospital to provide high quality patient-focused services in a state-of-the-art facility and to compete effectively with free-standing ambulatory surgery centers and other facilities.”
In its application, Kent said the new building would be 30,000 square feet and would cost $11.6 million to build and equip, plus another $3.5 million per year in incremental operating costs.
The need, hospital officials said, is quite clear, because the new ORs will replace the hospital’s oldest ORs, which were built in 1972 and don’t meet current standards – the latest surgical equipment, some of which is very big, simply can’t fit in those rooms.
Outpatient surgery has also been on the rise, Kent officials noted, growing by 3.5 percent per year from 1996 to 2006, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Freestanding, nonhospital surgical centers have taken a big chunk of that business, however, so for Kent, the project is also about boosting its competitiveness.
In addition, in the 7,390-square-foot space that will be vacated, Kent plans to build a new short-stay unit with 10 single rooms, for $3.4 million, plus $2.96 million in incremental operating costs. That facility would open in June 2012.
Not only will the new unit better meet the needs of short-term patients, Kent said in its application, but it will also increase the share of single-room beds at the hospital, which is still small, and make it easier to accommodate patients who need to be isolated.
The certificate-of-need application is posted on the Department of Health Web site.
