“We are planning for the future, to meet the area’s health care needs for the next 20-30 years,” said Steve Edwards, CoxHealth president and CEO. “Our main hospital tower was designed in 1983, and it has served us – and the people of Southwest Missouri – quite well. But looking forward, we know that to continue to provide the absolute best patient care and meet the needs of our growing and aging population, we must have facilities designed for the highest standards of care and efficiency. This new patient tower places us securely at the forefront of health care in the Midwest.”
The new tower will feature all private patient rooms, and once complete will allow CoxHealth to convert all of the existing rooms in Cox South to private rooms as well. Should a medical disaster occur, these existing rooms can be converted back to semi-private rooms in mere hours, giving the health system unprecedented flexibility to meet patient demands.
“Patients want private rooms, and health care providers know private rooms provide a quiet, healing environment,” said Edwards.
The Women’s and Children’s Hospital will utilize three floors of the nine floor addition and will include a new Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, Pediatric Intensive Care Unit, Pediatric Unit and Post-Partum Unit, with easy access to CoxHealth’s existing Labor and Delivery area and women’s and children’s physician offices.
The new Neuroscience Hospital will also utilize three floors of space and will include inpatient care units, plus clinic space for Springfield Neurological and Spine Institute physicians and Ferrell-Duncan Clinic neurologists.
Says Edwards: “Our neuroscience and women’s and children’s teams are an absolute strength of this organization. We deliver more than 3,000 babies a year, and our neuroscience team has been rated number one in the nation for spinal fusion by CareChex. We are proud of the care we provide, and we are happy that our professionals will soon be able to provide this outstanding care in the area’s best facility, bar none.”
The project has a $130 million budget, financed in part by an April bond issuance. While the health care industry faces uncertainty as it deals with health care reform and the question of Medicaid expansion, one certainty remains – more and more patients will need care, and mission-driven hospitals such as CoxHealth are trusted to provide it. Given the historically low interest rates in the bond market, investing in a new patient tower now means CoxHealth can provide that care at a significantly lower cost than if it waited to pursue the project. The organization’s analysis shows that if current interest rates were to increase by only 1.5 percentage points, the cost of the bond offering would increase by $43 million.
“We have thought about building a new tower for a long time,” says Dr. John Duff, senior vice president and chief hospital officer. “We know we need to grow to serve our community and if we wait, it will be more costly for us to do so.”
Money from this approximately $200 million bond issuance will also be used to fund projects and refinance debt associated with Cox Medical Center Branson.
Groundbreaking for the new tower at Cox South is scheduled for May, with an 18-24 month construction period.
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