By VICKI URBANIK

About two months after the county hospital was sold, another health care system has announced plans to expand into Porter County.

Officials with Memorial Health Systems of South Bend announced Tuesday that they have purchased 53 acres near the intersection of C.R. 500N on the east side of Ind. 49. The site is in Washington Township and was annexed by Valparaiso last year.

Initial plans call for a 100-bed acute-care hospital, with plans to expand to 250 beds. The hospital will have an emergency room, and the campus will include an urgent care center, outpatient services, preventative health care programs and other services.

Groundbreaking is planned for next year, with a tentative opening date in 2010.

In the meantime, Community Health Systems of Tennessee, which recently bought the county-owned Porter Memorial Hospital, is also making plans to build its own 225-bed hospital within four years. The site of the CHS hospital has not yet been announced.

Memorial’s move into Porter County, coupled with the new presence of CHS, is being hailed as major development for health care in this county.

“There’s an obvious need here for more sophisticated and updated health care,” Memorial Senior Vice-President Theodore Foti said today.

Foti said many health care services aren’t being provided in Porter County now, and that Memorial wants to stop the out-migration of Porter County residents seeking care elsewhere. He emphasized that Memorial’s Porter County hospital will be a major facility, not merely branch of the South Bend hospital. A local board, with Porter County citizen representation, will be formed to oversee the facility.

Foti said Memorial officials spent a fair amount of time in Porter County. “It became so apparent to us that this was an area that was experiencing both population growth and economic growth,” he said. “Physically, you can feel it. There’s energy there.”

Valparaiso Mayor Jon Costas said Memorial’s announcement is significant, since it means that Porter County will move from having one outdated, 70-year-old institution provide hospital care to two very sophisticated health care providers.

The transition will result in more health care specialties, more ancillary services, more high-quality jobs, and the potential to attract more ancillary businesses and industries, he said.

“It’s a huge transition for the county,” Costas said. “We will really become a destination point for health care.”

Similarly, Porter County Commissioner President Robert Harper said he always expected Porter County would one day have more than one hospital provider, noting the number of hospitals in neighboring Lake and LaPorte counties. Residents will now a choice in their hospital, he noted.

“In my opinion, it can’t do anything but good for the citizens of Porter County,” he said.

Memorial’s Interest

Memorial attempted to buy Porter Memorial Hospital last year, after the hospital board put out the notice that it was interested in a sale or merger. A county/hospital task force ended up selecting Triad, Inc., which in turn has been bought by CHS, the nation’s largest hospital company.

But even though it wasn’t selected as the PMH buyer, Memorial clearly remained interested in Porter County.

Foti said Memorial has outpatient facilities in other counties, but that the Porter County hospital will be its first hospital outside of St. Joseph County.

The key to a quality health care system is its physicians, Foti said. Memorial has found the Porter County physicians are “very enlightened.”

“They want things better than they are,” he said.

He likened the potential for health care in Porter County to the history of Memorial in South Bend. When he came to Memorial 23 years ago, he the hospital had 200 physicians and 950 employees. Now it has 650 physicians and 4,000 employees, and is the largest tertiary center between Chicago and Detroit. About the only services Memorial does not provide are organ transplants and a burn unit, the latter of which Foti said is because there are other very good burn units already in the area.

Like CHS, Memorial will offer physicians the option of investing in the hospital. If the Memorial hospital here is syndicated — in part owned by physicians — it will be considered for-profit.

However, Foti said that even if Memorial in Porter County stays non-profit, it will pay property taxes. It currently voluntarily pays property taxes on all but about two of its buildings in South Bend, making it the largest property taxpayer in the city.

Foti said payment of taxes is the right thing to do. Because Memorial is such a large presence in the city, and requires many services, it ought to pay its fair share of taxes, he said.

Memorial has also pledged to continue the program it has in South Bend, in which it provides 10 percent of its profits to local non-profit organizations.

Hospital Sale Timing

Although other health care providers have moved into Porter County in recent years, PMH has been the only hospital in Porter County, with its hospitals in Valparaiso and Portage. Hospital board members have warned in recent years that other hospitals have been eying Porter County, and just this spring, the former hospital board president confirmed that he had heard plans for another hospital to move in.

What would have happened if the county didn’t sell PMH, and Memorial still came in?

“I don’t know how long Porter Memorial would have survived,” Harper said. “They would not have been able to compete.”

He noted that just a few years ago, the hospital board asked the commissioners to impose a moratorium on for-profit outpatient clinics coming in.

“Could you imagine what a new hospital would have done to them?” he said.

Costas said he thinks the mere act of selling PMH created the possibility for other health care providers to seriously consider moving to Porter County. He commended Harper for his role in the hospital sale, saying that had the sale taken place a year from now, the situation may have been different.

New Hospital

CHS has not yet announced where in Porter County it intends to build its new hospital to replace the Valparaiso campus.

Costas said the city has the capacity and the infrastructure for the new CHS hospital and will do all it can to encourage another Valparaiso hospital. But he also acknowledged that CHS will make its selection based on its needs and that the market will dictate the ultimate decision.

Harper said he always got the feeling that CHS wanted a centrally located hospital, not necessarily in Valparaiso city limits. “I feel this may cement that,” he said of Memorial’s move into Valparaiso.

Foti said he doesn’t think in terms of CHS as being Memorial’s competitor. For the residents of Porter County, having two hospital systems will accelerate the quality of care.

“For Porter County residents, it gives them a choice, which they don’t have now,” he said.

Posted 7/5/2007