This article is from The Journal -Tribune
Hospital Breaks Ground for New Facility
By Mac Cordell
MARYSVILLE, Ohio —Community members and members of the Memorial Hospital of Union County community, along with officials from the Ohio State University gathered Friday, Oct. 7, in Marysville, to turn some dirt. “Today we are here to celebrate the groundbreaking of our community’s cardiac and surgery pavilion, which will be the first major construction project on this campus since 2004, representing 23,360 square feet and an investment in our community of more than $11 million,” said Chip Hubbs, president and CEO of MHUC.
The facility is part of what is being called “The Heart Partnership,” a collaborative effort between MHUC and the Ohio State University Medical Center. The Ohio State University is contributing about $2 million of the project’s estimated $11 million project. “This is a first of a kind relationship like this,” said Peter Geier, CEO of the OSU health system and COO of the Ohio State University Medical Center. It is also a first for MHUC. “For the first time, we will have state-of-the-art facilities, built specifically for and dedicated to cardiology services,” said Hubbs.
The Heart Partnership is expected to provide circulation (vascular) testing and monitoring, critical care management, diagnostics and testing, interventional cardiology through partnership with OSU Medical Center and prevention and rehabilitation services. In addition to the cardiac center, MHUC will also renovate its two existing operating rooms and will build a third. The facility is expected to be complete by December 2012. Hubbs said there will be a resemblance to the Ross Heart Center in Columbus. “That is intentional,” said Hubbs.
Hospital representatives wanted the community to be certain this is a partnership and not a takeover. “Since its opening in 1952, the hospital has been the community’s facility,” said Chad Hoffman, president of the MHUC board of trustees. He added, “ We do not want to be owned by a large medical organization and they don’t want to own us.” Hubbs agreed.
“Though we value our independence, sometimes we cannot be all that we want to be without a partner,” said Hubbs. “We are proud to be associated with the Ohio State University Medical Center and the Richard M. Ross Heart Hospital, not only on this building, but for the provision of services inside.” He said the hospital is proud to be owned by the community and hopes the community is proud of it.
“We are an independent, community hospital, owned by the community,” Hubbs said. “We are the only hospital in Union County and work hard to be an organization you can all be proud of and to be your first choice for health care.
“This project is a continuation of that mission, to provide the services that our community wants and needs, with a level of clinical quality and customer service you should expect when friends and family are caring for friends and family.”
In addition to the contribution from OSU, the Union County Hospital Association is giving a $500,000 gift to the project and the MHUC Development Council is directing a $1.1 million fundraising effort.
Those wanting more information about the partnership may go to www.theheartpartnership.org.
This article is from The Columbus Dispatch
OSU Helps Hospital add Heart Center
By Holly Zachariah
Sunday, October 9, 2011 5:55 AM
MARYSVILLE, Ohio — Some doctors share the philosophy that if a hospital wants to have the greatest effect on the health of a community, it should pick one disease and focus on it.
Cardiovascular disease is the No. 1 killer of both men and women older than 25, so Memorial Hospital of Union County has chosen the heart. Dr. Michael Davis practices there and is medical director of the Heart Partnership, a venture between Memorial and the Ohio State University Medical Center. He embraces the aforementioned philosophy.
Memorial Hospital broke ground on Friday for an $11.3 million Surgery and Heart Pavilion that will allow the hospital to expand its cardiovascular services by implanting pacemakers, performing diagnostic heart catheterizations, clearing vascular blockages and adding interventional radiology and thoracic injections. OSU Medical Center has committed $1.42 million for the catheterization lab and another $600,000 for furnishings.
Memorial Hospital remains an independent, county-owned hospital, but it has worked with Ohio State on heart services for three years.
“We value our independence and didn’t want to be owned, managed or controlled by someone else,”said Chip Hubbs, Memorial’s chief executive officer and president. “But we recognized we couldn’t do it alone and be everything for everyone. Cardiology services are critical, and it’s an area where we realized we could excel with the right partnership.”
The addition, expected to be completed in December 2012, is to streamline cardiac care and bring the hospital services in line with what most others in central Ohio offer. But Memorial will have the advantage of being the newest, with the latest technology, Davis said.
In the seven-county metro area, most of the hospitals outside Columbus have heart centers that offer diagnostic catheterizations. Some, such as Licking Memorial in Newark and Fairfield Medical Center in Lancaster, perform even the most-advanced procedures. Madison County Hospital and Dublin Methodist are among the few that do not have heart-catheterization labs.
Some of the smaller hospitals outside Franklin County also joined forces long ago in some way with a larger hospital system. OhioHealth owns Grady Memorial in Delaware, and Madison County Hospital is an affiliate of the Mount Carmel/OSU Health Alliance.
Berger Hospital in Circleville, which operates under the umbrella of its own Berger Health System, just last week opened a nearly $700,000 cardiac-care unit expansion in partnership with MidOhio Cardiology, part of the OhioHealth network.
The benefits of such partnerships are clear for everyone, officials say: The smaller hospitals tap the checkbook, expertise and credibility of a larger system, and the bigger hospitals get a direct line to patients whose needs exceed what the local hospitals are able to provide.
In Marysville, the new heart center will mean more than simply adding catheterizations to the hospital’s menu of services. It will allow cardiovascular patients to stay close to home for their follow-up care. Plus, the addition of fluoroscopy technology — imaging services that allow in-depth, real-time peeks inside a body — will be cutting edge, Davis said.
Patients who come into the emergency department with full-blown heart attacks still will be transferred immediately to Ohio State, Davis said. But the majority of patients at intermediate risk who come to the hospital with chest pain or other cardiovascular-related symptoms will find everything they need locally.
Hubbs said the addition will make the hospital more competitive in central Ohio’s crowded health-care market.
“Our Achilles’ heel has always been our facility. Even though our care has been just as good as anyone’s, our aging building is not as attractive as our competitors’, and that matters to some people,” he said. “This new pavilion will help us change that perception.
This article is from Business First
Ohio State, Memorial Hospital Extend Heart Partnership
Friday, October 7, 2011, 6:00am EDT
Memorial Hospital of Union County is forging a closer clinical and financial relationship with Ohio State University Medical Center as part of its efforts to remain independent.
Ohio State is buying $2 million in equipment and moving its Marysville-based cardiologists to the publicly owned hospital as part of an $11.4 million surgical and outpatient addition set to open in December 2012. For the past three years, cardiac services have been co-branded with OSU, with university doctors and Memorial Hospital staff.
“They probably were interested in us because we don’t have a history of trying to go out and buy the community regional hospitals. It’s not our mission,” said Larry Anstine, CEO of University Hospital at Ohio State, who until September was also head of Ross Heart Hospital.
Memorial Hospital also works with Columbus-based OhioHealth Corp. in an occupational health venture and would welcome a pediatric partnership with Nationwide Children’s Hospital, said CEO Chip Hubbs, but would never want an enterprise-wide deal. He said he quickly abandoned thoughts a few years ago of leaving county control to become a private nonprofit medical institution.
“More than anything, we value our independence,” said Hubbs, who has blogged about the importance of community ties on the hospital’s website. “We don’t want to be owned by somebody else. We don’t want to be managed by somebody else.”
Keeping patients
Hubbs said a new building to house the Ohio State cardiologists was always part of the partnership’s plan, but took time.
“They’re getting a place they were able to design from scratch,” Hubbs said. “(Until now), it hasn’t been packaged well as a cardiology program.”
Construction is set to start in the coming weeks on the 23,360-square-foot expansion, which also will replace operating rooms, provide more lobby and staff break space, add private preoperative and recovery rooms, and relocate digestive diagnostic procedures from a separate surgery center.
Noninvasive cardiac services that Ohio State had provided elsewhere already moved to the main hospital, and when the addition opens, patients will for the first time have access to diagnosis and treatment through cardiac catheterization and be able to get pacemakers without traveling to Columbus.
“Creating the capacity to be able to treat patients closer to home is a good thing,” Anstine said.
Ohio State provides physicians and trains students at other community hospitals, and has a partial ownership stake with Columbus-based Mount Carmel Health System in Madison County Hospital, but Anstine said buying equipment to expand a single specialty in Union County is new.
“If it works ... it could be a new model we could replicate elsewhere to help other communities have access to these kind of services,” he said.
Pumping up margins
The partnership has helped attract more heart patients to the hospital even as overall volumes have decreased since 2009 because of the economy and the 2008 opening of OhioHealth’s Dublin Methodist Hospital about 18 miles away, Hubbs said.
Not only has the hospital been treating fewer patients, those that did come were more likely to have inadequate or no insurance, according to financial statements. Memorial Hospital’s revenue was $73.7 million in 2010, up 7.5 percent over two years, but its operating margin was squeezed in that span to 4.2 percent from 4.9 percent as the downturn began.
Volumes are rebounding and the new center is key to a sustained turnaround, Hubbs said. Aging facilities have been the limiting factor on growth, he said. The last addition was a women’s health and maternity wing in 2004, and last year the hospital issued nearly $2.8 million of tax-exempt bonds to buy an electronic medical records system.
The heart and surgical addition – designed by Columbus-based DesignGroup and built by Cincinnati-based Messer Construction Co. – will create more efficient flow through the operating suites, allowing for more cases per day, and end a longstanding problem of wheeling patients from intake down a long hallway past public areas.
“Nobody wants to be seen on a gurney in a surgical gown, particularly in a small town,” he said.
About 75 percent of the hospital’s business is outpatient so it’s unlikely to add beds even as the population ages, Hubbs said. However, in a few years it may consider an addition to convert to all-private rooms.
Carrie Ghose covers health care and medicine, higher education, technology and business services for Business First.
This article is from The Plain City Advocate
Partnership of the Heart
Memorial Hospital breaks ground for landmark facility
By Fran Odyniec, Editor
Under a bright, blue Ohio sky, Memorial Hospital of Union County broke ground Friday afternoon for a new Cardiac & Surgery Pavilion on the hospital grounds at 500 London Ave. in Marysville.
The hospital’s president and CEO, Chip Hubbs, flanked by dignitaries and officials from Memorial Hospital, OSU Medical Center, OSU Heart Center, the city of Marysville and Union County, told the nearly 400 guests including hospital staff in attendance, “This is an important day in our history. We are making an $11 million investment to bring state-of-the-art cardiology services to Marysville and Union County.”
Memorial Hospital and OSU Medical Center formed the Heart Partnership in 2009, which has led to the finalization of plans for the 23,360- square foot pavilion which will house cardiologists from OSU who have been working from OSU Heart Center cardiologist offices on the hospital campus.
“If it resembles the Ross Heart Hospital at OSU, it was done on purpose,” laughed Hubbs, as he motioned to the architect’s rendering of the pavilion which had been hung behind the dais. “Our partnership is the first of its kind in central Ohio in which we will have shared resources and expertise. OSU has made a $2 million capital investment in this building.”
“We will be able to provide services that this community wants and needs,” he continued, “and have come to expect.”
Peter Geier, CEO of the OSU Health System, echoed Hubbs’ comments.
“This is a first of its kind for OSU in the 30-year relationship we’ve had with Memorial Hospital,” Geier said of the expanded Heart Partnership. “We couldn’t think of a better partner with whom to do it.”
Geier pointed out that after the pavilion is completed, patients will no longer need to travel to Columbus for heart health care.
President of the Memorial Hospital medical staff, Matt Hazelbaker, MD, praised the Heart Partnership.
“It allows for expert medical heart teams from OSU to provide great care for the community by helping us improve care here at Memorial,”
said Hazelbaker. “We will broaden the scope of care for residents in and around Marysville, and we’ll be able to recruit better physicians.”
Union County Commissioner Charles Hall, himself a former heart patient at Memorial Hospital, commented on the economic effect the hospital has on the county.
“With 715 employees, it is an economic driver in this area,” Hall said. “And those employees give back to the community through involvement in entities around the county.”
He added, “It’s great to have a facility here for local patients to get local care.”
After the ground breaking ceremony was over, Hubbs said that it was of prime importance to expand the heart care capabilities at Memorial Hospital.
“For us heart disease is the biggest health care problem in our county,” he said. “These are needed services. The great community support allows us to grow.”
“Being the second largest employer in Marysville and the third largest in Union County,” he said, “we have several responsibilities so we are driven to meet their needs.”
Hubbs indicated that is a major reason why the hospital chooses to remain an independent health care facility overseen by the county commissioners.
The Cardiac & Surgery Pavilion is the hospital’s first construction project since 2004, when the women’s health and maternity wing was built. Services it will provide include: cardiology diagnostics, endocopy with two new endo surgical suites, surgery with renovation of two OR suites and the building of third and larger OR suite.
Construction of the pavilion will be as a build out toward London Avenue, attached to the current surgery department wit a tie into the hospital’s main corridor.
Messer Construction, of Cincinnati, will manage the project which has been designed by DesignGroup in Columbus.
