With a groundbreaking ceremony on Friday, August 9 at noon, Crawford County Memorial Hospital will embark on a 30-month construction and remodeling project. The medical clinic and rehab therapy areas will undergo extensive remodeling and expansion, and private registration bays will be added in the process. The total cost of the renovation and construction is $28 million. This includes $3 million in cash from CCMH, $3 million in bank participation notes, and $22 million in USDA financing. Repayment of the loan can only be facilitated through net positive cash flows from patient care.
“Beginning about three years ago, the Board and staff at CCMH began working on a master facility planning process. From this process, we knew we needed to do a building project to better serve our community and customers.”
That’s Erin Muck, CCMH President and CEO.
“We have been guided in this process by Invision Architecture. Invision has been in Iowa for 100 years helping with projects like ours. Along with Graham Construction, the Construction Manager at Risk (CmaR) for our project, they have assisted us in getting ready to put shovels in the ground.”
Muck said, as noted above, the project is financed through a loan which will be repaid from patient care revenues.
“We secured a long-term USDA loan with a 2.5% interest rate. This made the project affordable for us. Above all, the repayment of the loan will not come from property taxes. We cannot use property taxes for building projects. Our uses for property taxes are limited to supporting our ambulance service, funding property, casualty, and malpractice insurance premiums, and paying for state mandated employee benefits like IPERS, similar to the city, school, and county employees.”
She reiterated property taxes will not go to the building project.
“Crawford County residents will not see their taxes increase for the building project. I’ve be asked, ‘if you’re not going to use taxes to pay for this, then how does this work?’ Today, outpatient revenue is what’s really paying the bills. Because of this, the medical clinic traffic has almost tripled over the last 10 years or so. We’re seeing a lot more patients now than we were when the hospital was originally built back in 2011. More patients means more providers, and more providers means more exam rooms and offices. For example, we have a new orthopedic surgeon on staff, which we’re excited about. We’re recruiting another general surgeon. We’re bringing in more family medicine providers. And so doing that, we need this space to be able to accommodate the volume of patients.”
Muck noted the changes already apparent with construction and renovation beginning.
“One of the biggest changes that’s already happened is temporarily moving our Rehab Services department to the former Dr. Luft building on Arrowhead Drive, down the hill from the hospital. We have signage already in place there denoting this as our CCMH Outpatient Services building. The west entrance to the medical clinic is closed. All patients for the clinic and hospital need to use the north main hospital entrance. Parking for the medical clinic has been moved to the north lot. When you walk in our building now, you’re going to see a lot of signage. Our Spanish-language interpretive services have moved into our gift shop area. The gift shop is now on a kiosk that will move around the building to serve our patients.”
Additional departments and providers will also be relocating.
“The specialty clinic and same day services registration is now located east of the Information Desk. Specialty clinic providers will be seeing patients in the same day services area near surgery. Same day services have moved over into the former OB unit on the med floor. And our rural health clinic move because we’re going to be remodeling and adding on to the current space. Most of the medical clinic providers are located in the specialty clinic area. That’s where the registration for medical clinic patients will also be completed.”
There is signage both inside and outside of the building to assist patients in getting where they need to go. Staff will also be available at the Information Desk to guide patients to the appropriate registration areas.
Muck reiterated the groundbreaking on the west side of the clinic on August 9 is open to anyone in the community to attend.
“This is a community project. We’re here to serve our community and patients better. The groundbreaking program will last about a half an hour. We’ll have several people who will make short remarks, at least as short as we can convince them to make those. And then, we’ll turn some dirt and people will have shovels and hard hats and all those other kinds of things.”
In conclusion, Muck noted all of the projects and investment being made in Denison.
“Our project is super exciting. It’s great for the future of CCMH and our community. It’s awesome to see a lot of investment being made in this community. There is new construction at Broadway Elementary. The Crawford County Wellness Center project is beginning construction. Eventually, we’ll have the new Career Academy at Western Iowa Tech. These are exciting times and it’s great for our community. I just can’t be more pleased.”
