Print
Email Story
Tri-Citians can expect to see longer waits for health care or will need to travel outside the area for care as local hospitals are filled to capacity, and expansion may be years away.
Officials from Kadlec Regional Medical Center and Kennewick General Hospital said they're regularly full, mostly because the local population is booming and aging.
Kadlec President Lane Savitch said new services and physicians also are drawing people from a larger geographic area to seek care in the Tri-Cities.
"The combination of our increase in service levels and increasing population have been a double-whammy," Savitch said. "In some ways it's a good problem to have to be busy and be full, but when you're dealing with people's lives and people's health, being too full can be a real concern."
At noon Friday, Kadlec was 86 percent full. While that number fluctuates hour to hour, Savitch said it's not unusual for the Richland hospital's occupancy to be that high on any given day lately.
Chuck Barnes, KGH's executive director for support services, said KGH also sees a lot of days when most or all of the beds are full.
"We have sent patients to Kadlec. We have sent patients out of town," Barnes said. "It's been a busy time. We're all busy."
Both hospitals have submitted applications to the state Department of Health to add beds, but it could be several months before approval comes.
Savitch said it could be 2013 before the additional 114 beds requested by Kadlec are available for use, as the hospital first would have to raise money and build the remaining four floors of its 10-story River Pavilion tower.
KGH hopes to break ground on a new $95 million hospital at Southridge this summer. The new 74-bed, 168,000-square-foot hospital is intended to replace the aging Auburn Street medical campus as the district's main hospital and will house its emergency department, operating rooms, diagnostic imaging, critical care and medical and surgical units.
The new hospital won't have any more beds than the existing hospital, but KGH has applied to the Department of Health to put 25 beds in the Auburn Street facility back into use once the Southridge hospital is built.
To add beds, hospitals have to get a Certificate of Need from the state health department. The department determines whether hospitals can expand based on population.
But local hospital officials have argued the formula used by Certificate of Need program staff relies on population estimates that are too low to reflect the Tri-Cities' growth rate.
Kadlec and KGH officials hope to convince the state that the community needs the new beds at a public hearing on their applications, which are being considered together, next month.
Kadlec Health Systems CEO Rand Wortman said Kadlec is prepared to put 49 semi-private rooms that were closed after its new River Pavilion tower opened back into use as soon as the hospital can get approval from the state.
"Obtaining Department of Health approval is our top priority," Wortman said. "We simply cannot wait for a new building to be finished to put those beds into service. The community needs them right now."
The public hearing on Kadlec and KGH's expansion applications is at 11:30 a.m. April 6 at the Kennewick Public Library.
Written comments can be submitted until March 29 to the Department of Health, Certificate of Need Program, Mail Stop 47852, Olympia, WA 98504-7852.
-- Michelle Dupler: 509-582-1543; mdupler@tricityherald.com
