A construction management firm is being sought in connection with a proposed $50 million county hospital.
The project's scope consists of a 98,500 square feet replacement facility on the campus of the exiting Neshoba County General Hospital and Nursing Home and is to be completed by Dec. 1, 2011, according to a legal notice placed in The Neshoba Democrat today.
The project is expected to be built using the Federal Department of Health and Human Service HUD-242 Insured Healthcare Facility Guaranteed Loan Program.
The construction manager will be asked to develop a guaranteed maximum price based upon design development level documents plus civil and structural drawings to facilitate a fast-track construction schedule.
The two-story free-standing replacement facility would be constructed on a seven-acre parcel adjacent to the current hospital in the southeastern corner of the current campus off south Holland Avenue behind the new EMS building facing a small creek.
The targeted start date for construction is July 21, 2010, with patients being admitted by Dec. 1, 2011.
Hospital officials told supervisors earlier this year that they planned to contribute $15 million in cash toward the project and finance the remainder with a FHA/HUD Section 242 loan.
The new 44-bed hospital would include an intensive care unit, emergency department, distinct same-day surgery unit, private patient rooms with full baths and private registration and admitting.
Advanced healthcare technology will also be added, including in-house MRI, 16 slice CT-scanner, digital mammography, electronic medical records, automation in the pharmacy, micro laboratory and a sleep lab.
Officials anticipate an interest rate of at least 7.25 percent on the HUD loan, they said.
The hospital must first submit a pre-application and, if approved, the actual application would then follow and require the county to put the property up as collateral.
"There will be a need for a deed of trust either on the new facility or a temporary deed of trust on the old hospital until the new facility reaches a certain phase in construction," Obbie Riley, president of the Board of Supervisors, said in August.
The hospital's Board of Trustees earlier this year hired InnoVative Capital, which provides banking and financial services for the health care industry, to do a debt capacity analysis and financing options assessment for the hospital.
A report prepared for the Board of Supervisors last year shows Neshoba County could support a 79-bed hospital since about 70 percent of the population is going out of the county for health care, but the county can't afford a larger facility, the debt capacity analysis shows.
That debt analysis, released in August, shows that the hospital has a debt capacity of about $34.8 million.
Neshoba General is currently licensed as an 82-bed facility.
Officials have not said what will become of the old facility once the new hospital is constructed.
The trustees and others have flatly rejected options such as privatization that could bring a larger hospital with more services.
"I'm gonna go in favor of us keeping the hospital and never go outside for help," Realtor Mike Tinsley told the Board of Supervisors in August. "Let's go ahead and do it and get it started."
For more than half a decade trustees have been weighing options for a new hospital since the current facility, which is nearly 50 years old, is in disrepair.
Last December, as officials weighed how to spend a $20 million Medicaid windfall, the county hospital administrator presented a thumbnail view of three previously undiscussed construction options for Neshoba County General Hospital, including construction of a new $100 million facility at another location.
A preliminary design for a $20 million to $25 million addition to house the emergency and surgical departments remained an option at that time as well, the administrator, Scott Barrilleaux told county supervisors.
Barrilleaux (pronounced BEAR-ee-yoh) told the supervisors in December 2008 that hospital officials were currently reviewing the options and "balancing that against the idea of how much we can afford."
Then in August of this year the notion of the HUD financing and putting the property up as collateral came into play and the supervisors agreed.
The hospital issue first came to light in February 2004 when Dr. Walt Wills spoke to the Philadelphia Rotary Club.
Willis, a Neshoba County native with a distinguished career in emergency medicine, is head of the emergency department and chief of staff.
He told business leaders in 2004 that the emergency department was treating four times as many patients as the facility was designed to handle.
Hundreds of thousands of dollars has since been spent on various studies and plans.
