Citizens Medical Center will move forward with a $10 million project to renovate and expand its emergency room, its board of managers agreed Wednesday.
The county-owned hospital delayed plans to redo its emergency room last year after elected officials expressed concern about the hospital鈥檚 declining cash reserves. Now that the facility is back in the black, the hospital鈥檚 board agreed to proceed with the project, which first began in 2017.
Dr. Daniel Cano, the hospital鈥檚 chief medical officer, said the upgrades were desperately needed to bring the emergency room to modern standards. The current ER has 18 beds, although not all of them are in private rooms.
鈥淚t was one of the first things I noticed when I first toured the hospital, I said 鈥極h wow, a curtained ER,鈥欌 he said, laughing. 鈥淪o we need those private spaces.鈥
The expansion will add more beds to Citizens鈥 current emergency room. The renovated ER will have almost 30,000 additional square feet, as well as two trauma rooms. In addition, plans for the project include two rooms for patients experiencing mental health crises and two rooms for patients who need decontamination in the event that they are exposed to harmful chemicals or other hazardous materials, hospital CEO Mike Olson said. The decontamination rooms were added to the design because of 足交视频鈥檚 proximity to petrochemical plants.
Bob Henderson, a financial adviser for the county, recommended the county pay for the project using certificates of obligation, a type of municipal bond that does not require voter approval. Henderson is a managing director at RBC Capital Markets, an investment firm that serves as the county鈥檚 financial adviser. Because Citizens is owned by the county, commissioners court will make the final decision about whether to issue the certificates of obligation. The debt and interest on the loan would be repaid by Citizens, and not by county tax dollars, officials clarified.
County Judge Ben Zeller said Wednesday that he expects the court to approve the decision unanimously.
Henderson said he expected the interest rate to be less than 3% and to be repaid over 20 years. Henderson had previously recommended using certificates of obligation to finance the project when hospital officials discussed it last year. Interest rates are moving down and 鈥渢rending in the hospital鈥檚 favor,鈥 he said.
The hospital expects to use its revenue to repay the debt, said Duane Woods, the hospital鈥檚 chief financial officer.
The expansion and renovation likely will take about 18 months to complete, including six months of finalizing the design plans and 12 months of construction. The project will resume with Rawley McCoy & Associates and HKS Architects designing the new space and Forney Construction completing the work.
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