Pikes Peak Regional Hospital, a new era in health care

Health care history will be made when Teller County residents walk through the doors of their new 40,000-square-foot full-service hospital.

By 9 a.m. Oct. 1, the Pikes Peak Regional Hospital building will no longer teem with subcontractors, cleaning crews and touch-up painters.

Its surgical equipment will be sterilized. Its computer and medical systems fully tested, and its trendy waiting room chairs will be ready for patients.

After nearly eight years in the planning, the $25 million community centerpiece hospital atop a 20-acre campus is ready to go.

The 15-bed hospital, with space to expand up to 75 beds, will open with 54 employees, $6.3 million in medical equipment and furnishings, and a groundswell of community pride.

The facility will be managed by Nashville-based Brim Healthcare, which operates 40 similar rural and small community hospitals across the country.

All employees will have participated in two weeks of mock patient activities, designed to assure a smooth opening, said Harley Smith, the hospital's CEO and Brim representative.

Most of the hospital's staff has come from the immediate area - including 18 of the program's 21 nurses. Many of them left jobs at Penrose and Memorial hospitals.

"It was just so much closer for them," Smith said, adding that all medical personnel are required to live within a 30-minute commute.

So far, 27 physicians either have or plan to have credentials to work out of the new hospital. Among them are two general practitioners, an orthopedic surgeon, a cardiologist, a general surgeon who recently returned from Iraq and two Colorado Springs plastic surgeons. A women's OB/GYN doctor also will be available on site one day a week.

And patients are already lining up.

"We've already got locals who have been waiting to get their elective surgeries done tell us that they'll be in the first week or two we're open to schedule," Smith said.

Smith and Ron Ebersole, a chief operations officer for Brim Healthcare in Minneapolis, have helped outfit, staff and develop protocols for the new facility.

Brim is leasing the facility and will manage its operation, Ebersole said.

Located west of Highway 67 between Woodland Park and Divide, J.E. Dunn Construction was the project's general contractor and Architectural Nexus of Salt Lake City was the architect.

More than a "Band-Aid"

The new medical team will have access to some of today's leading medical equipment.

The radiology department had originally considered a traditional mammography screening X-ray machine, but soon realized more advanced FDA approved digital options would enable them to electronically send X-rays to Memorial Hospital's radiology staff in Colorado Springs for reading.

"You don't get radiologists to come to a small community like this. They'd need $400,000 to $500,000 a year," Smith said, adding that the association eventually decided to spend $500,000 obtained from state grants to finance unbudgeted state- of-the-art laboratory, X-ray, surgical and electronic medical records upgrades.

The hospital's emergency department is six rooms, including a trauma room and a negatively pressured decontamination area where patients with radiation or chemical exposure can be treated without contact with the main ER area.

"We also have overflow capabilities in case of a mass casualty event and have the ability to utilize the post-anesthesia care unit and the second-stage recovery unit, if necessary," Ebersole said.

Both Brim executives emphasize the company's focus on patient care.

The association's business plan research showed that based on its service area, an average of seven or eight beds will be filled at any given time. They also determined that the hospital's most frequent visitors would need orthopedic treatment.

"This area attracts a lot of people who like to rock-climb, hike, ski, take their mountain bikes, ATVs or motorcycles out for a ride. That means we get more than our share of accidents and falls," he said, adding that the hospital's 36,000 area residents, rather than tourists, would typically use the facility.

Finances in order

Curt Grina, president of the Pikes Peak Regional Medical Center Association and its fundraising entity the PPRMCA Foundation, spearheaded a volunteer effort to find a way to pay for the facility's construction. He calls fundraising efforts "a pure grassroots project" and said he enjoyed the challenge.

"We were lucky," he said. "Unlike large corporate hospital companies, we didn't have to setting up a special tax district - and the government won't be involved in running the hospital."

Pikes Peak Regional Hospital Association is an 85 percent owner and Brim Healthcare, the management company that will run day-to- day operations, owns a 15 percent stake.

The project was financed, Grina said, by a $10.3 million conventional mortgage provided by Matrix Capital Bank of Denver, which was guaranteed by the United States Department of Agriculture. In addition, the USDA provided a $4 million direct loan. More than $4 million has been raised so far through donations and grants obtained by the association prior to groundbreaking, and at least $3.8 million in working capital was contributed by Brim Healthcare