• 
• CLASS
• JOBS
• AUTO
• HOMES

Will hospital help city heal?

JANESVILLE — The plans are nearly complete, and the financing is in place.

Now it's time for the heavy lifting to begin on the 50-acre parcel of land at Interstate 90/39 and Racine Street that in two years will be home to St. Mary's Janesville Hospital and Dean Clinic Janesville.

"No matter where I go, and I've had the opportunity to participate in a lot of different things in Janesville, it is the No. 1 topic of excitement for the community," said Kerry Swanson, who was hired nearly a year ago as president of the new hospital.

"I'm very proud to be a part of that commitment to the community."

That commitment is a $150 million, 313,000-square-foot facility that's expected to employ nearly 700 people and create hundreds of new positions in a community that's suffered job losses for nearly two years.

The main entrance will be off Racine Street at Midland Road. The drive and patient drop-off zones will be near a "Town Square," a common area that will marry the hospital and clinic. Separate parking and access will be provided to both.

The $90 million hospital will use about 163,000 square feet and sit to the east of the Town Square. Given the lay of the land, hospital officials said there is adequate space to the east if the hospital needs to expand.

The $60 million clinic will occupy 150,000 square feet, a 25 percent increase over what Dean officials thought they would need when they announced the project in April 2008.

Officials from SSM Health Care of Wisconsin, St. Mary's parent, and Dean said they're excited about being able to design and build the facility in a vacant field.

"We're not retro-fitting anything," said Mary Starmann-Harrison, SSM's president and CEO in Wisconsin.

The project was delayed a year as SSM and Dean sought financing.

That delay, officials said, allowed more design time for the facility, which has been mapped out to optimize convenience and efficiency for patents and staff.

"The beauty of it is that many of the staff and the doctors have been involved in the design process, so our hope is that they'll be very familiar with the new space, even before they move into it because they're playing a role in designing it," said Craig Samitt, Dean's president and CEO.

So familiar, he said, that Dean ought to be able to move its operations from its Riverview and Northview clinics to the new facility in one day or over a weekend.

Patient focus groups have also been critical in the facility's design.

"We've asked people what their ideal hospital or clinic experience would be," Swanson said. "Their input has helped us design the building and our processes within it."

Services offered at the new hospital will be similar in scope to those available at Mercy Hospital in Janesville, but it will have some twists, Starmann-Harrison said.

"An example is the emergency department, which we've modeled after St. Mary's in Madison," she said. "We will have very limited waiting space because we don't want patients to wait in the waiting room. We want them immediately in to see the doctor."

Starmann-Harrison said the emergency room in Madison averages 16 minutes from the time a patient walks in the door to the time he or she sees a doctor.

"The ER is an incredible opportunity for us because it means so much to patients at a time when they are at their worst," she said.

Added Samitt: "It's not good service when you're sick and you're scared and you wait in an emergency room for six hours."

Swanson said the hospital will feature lots of natural light and patient room amenities that welcome loved ones who might want to spend a night.

In addition to adding a new hand clinic, Dean is exploring other new outpatient services.

"Most of our growth will be expanded access and availability of some of the services we already provide, such as orthopedics, general surgery and cardiology," Samitt said. "We want to greatly increase our specialty presence."