A long and often winding road reached an end and a beginning Thursday as ground was formally broken for a Sacred Heart Hospital to be constructed here near the Gulf/Franklin Center of Gulf Coast Community College.
The $30 million, 25-bed facility to be built on roughly 30 acres is slated to open in January 2009.
“I think it is the culmination of so many efforts by so many people,” said Gulf County commission chairman Bill Williams.
In March of 2004, before his election to office, Williams, as then-chairman of the county’s Health Care Advisory Committee, broke the news to the county commission that talks were underway with Sacred Heart.
“For me this is personal,” Williams said, noting with a son born with special needs, he had spent roughly four months at Sacred Heart in Pensacola as his son was treated. “I saw what they do. To bring that caliber of care to this county, it’s phenomenal. And when this is built, this will prove to be a regional asset, not just a county asset.”
The hospital project includes:
- 25 private rooms, an emergency department, intensive care unit and two operating rooms.
- An urgent care clinic to treat minor injuries and illnesses
- Laboratory services.
- Diagnostic imaged services such as CT scans, X-ray, ultrasound and mammography.
- A medical office building to provide offices for 10 physicians.
- A helipad to be used by Sacred Heart’s Air Heart helicopter, providing rapid transport for trauma patients and other critically ill patients to a trauma center.
- Roads, delivery areas and paved parking for 370 vehicles.
“This is fantastic,” said Dr. Tom Curry, whose practice is in Port St. Joe and who is also a member of the health care committee. “I can’t wait for this facility to be built. It will change my practice. It will change my life.”
Curry noted that a significant number of his patients require additional treatment at a hospital in Bay County. Once the Sacred Heart hospital is built, those patients can be treated locally. He can check on them, follow their progress within minutes of his office.
The path to Thursday was littered with obstacles pushed aside one by one.
The county health committee made an urgent priority of upgrading hospital care back in 1998 and entered negotiations with Bay Medical Center in 2001, talks which ultimately did not bear fruit.
Sacred Heart, which had partnered with the community and The St. Joe Company to construct a 50-bed hospital in Destin during the late 1990s, entered the picture, with St. Joe donating land, $5 million over 10 years and $1 million for site preparation.
The parties – which grew to include the county Health Department and county commission – finalized an agreement in spring of 2005, just weeks after the state shut down Gulf Pines Hospital, the long-time community hospital which had undergone years of financial woes and remains under bankruptcy protection sans a license to operate.
That agreement with Sacred Heart included the county levying a half-cent sales tax beginning in January 2006 with the money to be used to help underwrite care at the hospital for the indigent and underinsured.
This year Sacred Heart also established a radiology department at the county health department in Port St. Joe and has pledged assistance to a new county health facility being constructed in Wewahitchka.
Additionally, a committee chaired by Trish Warriner has raised roughly $1.5 million in “recognition” donations during the first year of a five-year fund-raising effort.
“This is just the beginning,” Warriner said of the groundbreaking. “Now it becomes a grassroots campaign, we are inviting everybody in the community to become a part of this effort.”
State Sen. Durell Peaden (R-Crestview), a champion of rural health care in Tallahassee, sponsored a bill in 2003 that allowed a non-profit such as Sacred Heart to construct a hospital in a rural county of between 15,000-18,000 in population – Gulf County fits the parameters – without the typical requirement of a Certificate of Need (CON).
“This is ideal,” Peaden said, noting that the Sacred Heart facility aligned perfectly with a vision he had in championing a medical school at Florida State University.
That medical school stresses rural health care, recruiting students from rural areas with the hope they will learn and ultimately practice in similarly rural settings.
“This provides a real world experience, with real people for those students,” Peaden said. “They will be able to come here and be with and learn from real doctors. And instead of spending large amounts of money recruiting doctors, this hospital will attract doctors who want to practice community medicine.
“As important as health care, though, is the economic impact.”
In addition to construction jobs in the short term, the hospital and medical office building are expected to provide an estimated 150 jobs.
“This is a bridge for the gap in the (economic) downturn which we think will be over sometime in late 2008,” said Alan McNair, executive director of the county Economic Development Council. “We are very grateful.”
The final obstacle proved to be securing permits from the state and, in particular, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The Corps suggested as many as five potential sites and environmental impact studies were performed for each.
The original site St. Joe identified ultimately was the choice, with the permit, issued in April, allowing for site preparation to begin – roughly 15 acres have already been cleared – while ensuring that seven acres of wetlands would remain untouched.
“This feels great,” said Doug Kent, executive director of the county Health Department and another member of the health care committee. “It feels like we accomplished our goals. This tells everybody the hospital is coming to fruition and Sacred Heart will be a player in the community.”
Peter Heckathorn, executive vice president of Sacred Heart and president of the Sacred Heart Medical Group summed it up for the throng of elected officials, civic leaders and residents who showed up for the groundbreaking, “I’m as excited as I can be today.”
