Mountain States Health Alliance Grows Green
JOHNSON CITY, Tenn. — Mountain States Health Alliance is growing in leaps and bounds with environmentally friendly practices in mind.
The privately owned and operated healthcare firm has begun preliminary design and development of two medical facilities just as construction is nearing the final phase on two other MSHA hospitals in Johnson City and Abingdon, Va.
Earlier this year, MSHA officials announced development of a $47.6 million, three-story, 44-bed hospital to replace the company’s 170-bed acute care facility, Smyth County Community Hospital, in Marion, Va. In building the 172,000-square-foot facility, MSHA is moving toward a greater focus on outpatient services and improved medical treatments designed to limit patients’ hospital stays, says company spokesman James Watson.
“We don’t need the facilities with the large bed counts that they had 30 or 40 years ago,” says Watson, pointing toward robotics surgery and other minimally invasive techniques that reduce the length of recovery time. “We’re trying to build smarter. We need more room for diagnostics and surgery and less room for inpatient rooms.”
Skanska USA, headquartered in Atlanta, will operate as construction manager and builder on the new Marion facility. Architects are still working on the design of the new hospital, and no timeline has been established yet, says Watson.
MSHA officials are aiming for LEED certification for two new hospitals scheduled to open in the coming months. Franklin Woods Community Hospital, a $122 million, 240,000-square-foot facility in Johnson City’s Med Tech Park, will offer the community 80 beds, a 22-room emergency department and five operating rooms when it opens in early July. Franklin Woods will replace Johnson City’s North Side and Johnson City Specialty hospitals.
Franklin Woods fuses natural features with functionality by incorporating trees and rock formations into the design and offering expansive views through large windows. Watson says that the hospital’s unusual, lengthy appearance comes from MSHA and the designers’ desire to build the facility around mature trees and large rocks, which have been incorporated into the design as healing gardens.
“It snakes around the grounds, conforms to the lay of the land, and goes around rocks and trees,” says Watson. “It’s designed to bring the outside in.”
Natural gas broilers, recycled building materials and efficient burners and hot water systems will reduce energy costs and promote sustainability.
Franklin Woods has targeted LEED Gold status, which, if achieved, would make it the only LEED-certified hospital in Tennessee, Watson says.
Skanska USA is construction manager for the Franklin Woods hospital and Columbus, Ohio-based Karlsberger architects designed the facility.
Next spring, MSHA will officially open the doors to the new Johnston Memorial Hospital in Abingdon. The $135 million, 350,000-square-foot hospital will replace the current Johnson Memorial building with a state-of-the-art facility located on a campus nearly three times larger than the existing location, which was the site of the city’s original hospital, built in 1908. The new location, the site of a recently constructed cancer center, will have space for expansion.
MSHA joined a partnership with Johnston Memorial in the spring of 2009, halfway through the construction of the new facility. Atlanta-headquartered RJ Griffin Company, a subsidiary of JE Dunn Construction, is the general contractor for the new hospital.
Also, in April, MSHA announced a $65 million expansion at Johnson City Medical Center in Johnson City. The 141,000-square-foot expansion, on which construction is scheduled to begin in the summer of 2011 and end in mid-2013, will house a 16-room surgical center, replacing JCMC’s 15 rooms, while adding pre- and post-op rooms, administrative space and family waiting areas.
With two green hospitals nearing completion and at least two more in the pipeline, MSHA established Mountain States Earth Care to continue green practices beyond building design.
Mountain States Earth Care was established in April to oversee green efforts at each of MSHA’s 15 hospitals. In addition to encouraging current and future green construction, the Earth Care group will identify and organize environmentally friendly projects that the hospitals can undertake, such as recycling efforts and the use of safer cleaning chemicals.
“This is both a grassroots effort and a program supported at the very top,” says Tony Benton, MSHA vice president of strategic planning and chairman of the Earth Care Committee. “We want to be known as the ‘green’ healthcare system, because we know taking care of people’s well-being includes providing them a safe environment.”
Mountain States Earth Care has designated a SEED (Sustainable Energy and Environment Department) Award to identify MSHA divisions that go above and beyond in green practices.