Seton Medical Center releases progress report for ’11

Friday, 27 January 2012 by Justin Cox

Workers install a desk at the new Seton Medical Center in Harker Heights. Construction began last year and the hospital recently released its progress report for 2011.HARKER HEIGHTS — The Seton Medical Center in Harker Heights has been growing steadily over the past several months since construction began in the spring of 2011.

The hospital released its progress report Dec. 31 and project an opening date of June 18 of this year, with construction completed by April 17.

Chief Financial Officer John Sharp said more than 1,967 new jobs will be created by 2022, with an estimated $1.1 billion impact to the area over the next 10 years.

Our joint venture is consistent with the LHP Hospital Group

It's a for-profit hospital, so we'll be paying taxes to support infrastructure and such, unlike nearby hospitals like Scott & White, which don't pay taxes, Sharp said.

Melissa Purl, Director of Marketing and Public Relations for Seton, said that will make the hospital one of the largest tax payers in all of Bell County.

To reach that April completion target date, a veritable army of workers are on site – 368, with a staggering 283,880 man hours put in at the end of 2011, according to the report. A total of 19 separate subcontractors are working on various components of the hospital, and the finishing work on much of the hospital's exterior is already under way.

The facility as a whole will be 192,400 square feet and have 83 beds, not including the 60,000 square-foot Harker Heights Medical Pavilion, which is still largely incomplete, with the iron beam skeleton still exposed.

The hospital will have an electronic frontier of infrastructure unlike any other hospital in the area, Purl said.

"When you come in and ask for your medical record, they're going to hand you a disc – we really are going to be virtually paperless," she said. "It's not going to be the usual envelope. It's been 45 years since a hospital has been built in Central Texas. So we're doing it completely different."

But she added that the ability to tend to every need of as many people in the community is what will make the hospital different.

"We're going to take just about every kind of insurance you can think of, for example – it's really patient-centered care, and that's what's going to set us apart. It's personalized."

Physician and Business Developent Coordinator Luke Potts is tasked with staffing the hospital's team of doctors and staff. He said there will be a focus on experience and leadership, as all doctors hired will be board-certified – that means no resident physicians learning on site.

"Right now I'm working really hard on building up the medical staff, just get some really good docs from all over, bring in the best of the best from around the nation and here in Texas," he said. "We are a community hospital. We will have the specialists we need to really take care of the community and what we see."

Potts said the facility will focus on primary and secondary care and covering all the needs of the patients.

The hospital will be equipped with a full-service emergency department, an intensive care unit, women's services, medical and surgical services, acute-care sercices such as cardiology, oncology, orthopedics and neurosurgery and a helipad for quickly transporting or receiving patients.

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