2 • APRIL 2014
HEALTHY VALLEY 2014
Valley healthcare investment soaring Hospital upgrades, new medical park top the list of more than $95 million in spending since 2008 By Amy Busek
HEALTHY VALLEY CONTRIBUTOR
More than half of the healthcare-related business licenses on file with the city of Spokane Valley are 27 months old or newer. The city’s public information officer, Carolbelle Branch, cautioned that those numbers (see “On the rise?” below) include an indeterminable number of licenses that lapsed and were later renewed, tempering the ability to draw conclusions from the data with any certainty. Even still: “It does bear attention because of the new Providence center,” she said. That would be the 11-acre, $44 million campus set to open later this month just east of the Sullivan exit on the north side of Interstate 90. That significant project, first announced in 2012, is not the only multi-million dollar healthcare-related investment made in recent years in Spokane Valley. Momentum really picked up in 2008, when Valley Hospital and Medical Center was purchased by Tennessee-based hospital conglomerate, Community Health Systems (CHS). The new owners have invested millions of dollars into the hospital since that time, including repurposing an under-utilized adjacent building and christening it the Valley Hospital Medical Office Building. A ribbon cutting and open house was held last month. The ever-growing Valley presence of both of the Spokane area’s healthcare heavyweights — Providence also operates Sacred Heart and Holy Family hospitals, while Community Health Systems also operates Deaconess — has corresponded with other health-related businesses taking notice. In the past two years, a pair of state-ofthe art cancer facilities have been built near the already crowded medical cor-
ON THE RISE? The 11-year-old city of Spokane Valley has 175 healthcare-related business licenses on file. Ninety-four of those have been filed since the beginning of 2012, including 34 in 2012, 48 in 2013 and 12 thus far in 2014 —including Family First Care Management, Senior Helpers of Spokane and Instant MD. These statistics include an unknown number of businesses that renewed a business license after allowing it to lapse.
HEALTHY VALLEY PHOTO BY CRAIG HOWARD
A sign of the times? The $44 million Providence Medical Park opens April 28. The project is the most visible among dozens set in motion since 2008 to revitalize the Spokane Valley healthcare landscape. ridor near Valley Hospital between Pines and McDonald roads. Cancer Care Northwest expanded an already established Valley practice with a new 20,000-squarefoot facility at 1204 N. Vercler, while Spokane-based Medical Oncology Associates opened the 22,000-square-foot Spokane Valley Cancer Center at 13424 E. Mission Ave — both multi-million-dollar investments. Added up, investments by Providence, CHS and the two new cancer facilities total more than $95 million. Meanwhile, many independent medical providers have aligned with either Providence or CHS. Both companies report the investment has meant new jobs and better, closer-to-home healthcare for Valley residents.
Valley Hospital: focus on quality “It takes investment to improve quality.” Those are the words of Sasha Weiler, the communications director for both Valley Hospital and Deaconess. Valley Hospital was in dire straits, Weiler explained, when CHS bought the hospital for $272 million in 2008 from Empire Health Services, a nonprofit organization, a purchase that also included Deaconess Hospital in Spokane. Weiler said the past
six years have been extremely fruitful, particularly for the Valley. “We’ve thoughtfully grown services, helped recruit many new physicians to the Spokane Valley area, expanded the number of people we employ in key areas and improved financial performance to better position us for success,” she said. The level of investment CHS put into the Valley hospital — Weiler reported some $25.5 million poured into hospital equipment since 2008 — is reaping large returns. “We’ve seen increases in surgical volume, admission and babies born since 2008,” Weiler said. “We’ve also seen an increase in market share — from under 10 percent Spokane County market share for inpatient admissions in 2009 to over 13 percent in 2012.” When CHS acquired Valley Hospital, it was “very undercapitalized,” according to Weiler. The hospital, which opened in 1969, had been expanded numerous times of the years, including a 53,000-squarefoot addition in 2002. However, keeping pace with necessary investments in technology and infrastructure had been a challenge. “Many basic needs and upgrades had gone unmet — some of the first major
FOR MORE Take a photo tour and learn more about the new Providence Medical Park Spokane Valley campus and the Valley Hospital Medical Office Building, both of which are making their debuts this spring. Pages 6-9 investments we made (were for) things like new patient beds, monitors, computers, carts, tables — good things that aren’t as ‘publicly visible’ as a new building or a waiting room model, but essential for good patient care,” she said. The first major purchase Valley Hospital made was a new CT scanner for half a million dollars, though spending six or more figures in a single transaction has proven to not be an uncommon occurrence. Among the other big-ticket expenditures since 2008: new patient monitors ($876,000), new perinatal monitoring system ($484,000), an advanced interventional radiology room ($1.3 million), MRI upgrades ($425,000), and improving all six operating rooms to “i-Suites” ($2.3 million).
See INVESTMENT, page 4