New Facility Is Latest Expansion Effort for Johnston Memorial Hospital
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Not content with opening new satellite centers for cancer treatment and urgent care, Johnston Memorial Hospital is about to go all the way with a new, $120 million facility.
Johnston Memorial announced its plans to build a new hospital at the same time it unveiled its new partnership with Mountain States Health Alliance, a managed health-care system based in Johnson City. The new hospital will be a joint venture between the two entities, according to Sean McMurray, chief executive officer.
“We’re partnering with the region’s leading health system, which we think will have many benefits for the community in the future,” McMurray says. “This was a big decision for us, but with so many uncertainties in the future of health care, we think it’s best to approach things with a partner. We believe that Mountain States makes the best partner for us, and this partnership will secure the future of our hospital.”
Tying in with Mountain States also will make it easier for Johnston Memorial to replace its entire physical plant, building a new facility three miles from its current site in downtown Abingdon. The new hospital will have 116 beds, roughly the same as the existing hospital, and also feature an enlarged emergency room, all private rooms and more. It will anchor a 60-acre campus, where Johnston Memorial currently has its new cancer center, off Interstate 81 and accessible by Lee Highway.
If all goes as planned, the new hospital should open in 2010, a date that can’t come soon enough for McMurray.
“It will be much more modern, much more efficient, with lots of improvements for the patient,” he says. “Access will be improved, we’ll have better parking, larger waiting rooms … it will just be easier all around for patients and their families to find their way, and it will help us to operate more efficiently. We’ll also be able to have medical office buildings adjacent to the hospital, which is something that we don’t have on this campus to speak of.”
Considering that Johnston Memorial traces its roots back to 1905, and its current home was built in 1919, small wonder that a new building is in order. But the new facility is only the latest expansion effort by the hospital, which opened a cancer center in 2007 on the land that will house the new hospital, and an urgent care center in January 2008 at “The Campus,” at Russell Road and Porterfield Highway, where the hospital has its outpatient surgical center. Next up is a diabetes care center, set to open in summer 2008.
“The new hospital helps us improve our core services, but we still want to have convenient outpatient centers located where people need them,” McMurray says. “We’re busier than we’ve been in years – we are just booming. I think people are really excited about the direction we’re headed in.”
Story by Joe Morris
Photo by Brian McCord
