Hospital Facility Master Plan suggestions revealed

Tim Casey, Vice President of Architecture at the Erdman planning firm, revealed the firm's first suggestions for the Hospital Facility Master Plan during Monday night's public meeting.

The presentation itself lasted only a mere fifteen minutes, while the question and answer portion consisted of an hour of pertinent questions from the audience, mostly about the plans themselves.

The plans revealed were drawn from extensive analysis of the market environment in Hot Springs County, Casey said. Facilities would be added or renovated according to forecasted need in the community as the county's population is predicted to remain fairly homogenous in the coming decades.

Casey predicted the hospital facility, as per studies mentioned above, would need nearly 58,000 square feet to be able to support and care for Hot Springs' aging population. The current hospital is around 43,000 square feet and was drawn out and constructed almost 50 years ago when both medical practices and the needs of the county's citizens were vastly different.

One of the foremost differences between the last Building Master Plan and Erdman's new suggestions is the expansion and rehabilitation of the inpatient services provided by the hospital, which are predicted to become a crucial service in the future.

Casey first provided the audiences with rough plans, which the Vice President of Architecture stressed many times were indeed only initial plans, for three "massing studies", then three concept studies. Each one of the massing studies more or less mirrored plans drawn for the concept studies.

The plans fall into three categories: building over the existing hospital, rehabilitating existing facilities and remodeling on the hospital grounds and vacating the road adjacent to the hospital to expand the facility onto hospital deeded land to the south of the present facility.

As is expected, some of the plans are more feasible than others. Casey, for instance, noted that dividing up the current hospital space and re-purposing facilities due to current and future needs as suggested in Massing Study #2 would be, "very, very expensive," and he was not sure the plan would be reasonable.

Concept Study A suggested a new facility that would be built onto the current hospital. This plan, like plan B, involves vacating the portion of East Arapahoe Road that runs alongside the south side of the hospital, involves moving some homes across the street from the present facility. Casey noted that, "A lot of thought was put into these [plans], but there is not much data" about feasibility of construction and vacating the road.

Concept Study B suggested plans for vacating a portion of East Arapahoe and building an extension onto the current facility that would suffice for the firm's future predictions of necessary facilities. Parking, along with an emergency room, surgery and imaging facilities would be built over and across East Arapahoe into land currently deeded to the hospital. Facilities in the present hospital would be rearranged and expanded to make the facility as a whole more efficient.

Concept Study C, which involved building facilities onto the hospital and utilizing almost all of the current hospital grounds, was seemingly dismissed by Casey and the audience alike during the presentation and question and answer portions. The plan, which would build an almost entirely new facility, would be a 'construction nightmare'. "It's going to be noisy and its going to be dusty [during construction]," Casey said, highlighting the fact that the present facility must remain open and functional during any construction process. Concept C would also be the most expensive and congested, which raised numerous concerns.

To wrap up his presentation, Casey noted that extensive studies have to be done to assure feasibility of suggested plans. "That's what's fun about this," he said, "There's a lot of what if's and flip-flops."

Hospital CEO Robin Roling hoped that hospital board members would be able to narrow down a suggested course of action at their December 16 board meeting. It is worth noting that even when a specific plan is chosen, it is only the first step of hospital renovation. Plans presented, although well thought out, were very basic, and extensive studies will be undertaken that will shape the facility according to input from Erdman, hospital staff, the hospital board of directors and community members.