Extension of medical center lease awaits Quorum Court’s approval
The Jefferson County Quorum Court Finance Committee and Jefferson Hospital Association agreed to a lease extension of Jefferson Regional Medical Center’s original Pine Bluff campus and White Hall property through Dec. 31, 2099, pending approval of the full Quorum Court on Tuesday.
The expiration date of the lease would be extended from Feb. 25, 2066.
The JHA, the board behind Jefferson Regional, requested the change at the behest of Anchor Health Properties, a developer the hospital board selected to construct the Jefferson County Specialty Hospital in White Hall, the name for which Jefferson Regional announced Tuesday.
Anchor Health Properties proposed a minimum 75-year ground lease as a condition for the development, according to hospital officials.
“Specifically, this project is part of a much bigger scope of work, which is expanding our current campus,” hospital CEO Brian Thomas said. “To do that, the initial step is to get rehab and psych patients and those services into a freestanding location, which is where this will be located in White Hall. So, this is Phase One of the overall initial project.”
The 85,000-square foot Jefferson County Specialty Hospital would be located on the existing property of the White Hall Health Complex on West Holland Avenue.
Plans for the facility call for 40 inpatient rehabilitation beds and 36 inpatient behavioral health beds, an increase from 27 rehab and 18 health beds at Jefferson Regional’s original Pine Bluff campus on 40th Avenue.
LifePoint Health, which recently acquired Kindred Healthcare, manages the inpatient rehab program at the hospital and will control 40% of the ownership of the new White Hall facility, Thomas said, with the hospital owning the other 60%.
Groundbreaking for the facility, which has an approximate price tag of $45 million,
is expected to take place in October, with a projected open date of 2024. JHA is initially contributing $3 million plus the license for existing beds.
Jefferson Regional is also planning an estimated $180 million update of its original facility built in 1959, which Thomas considers Phase Two of the overall project.
Thomas told Finance Committee members that facility condition assessments done in 2009 and 2011 indicated within 10 years, the cost of maintaining the facility would exceed the cost of investing in a new one, and that the facility in its current state is approaching the end of its useful life.
“It just needs to be enhanced and brought to standard when it comes to utilities and all those sorts of things,” Thomas said.
The JHA has planned a modernization of the facility since 2013.
The initial target date of 2019 for completion “has been delayed due to financial challenges specific to JHA and the hospital industry in general, as well as the covid-19 pandemic,” Thomas said.
“The size of the patient rooms that were built in 1959 are so much smaller than a standard hospital room today,” Bryan Jackson, chief administrative officer for Jefferson Regional, said.
“In fact, back then, the rooms that were built for two patients are smaller than today’s private room. Things like that are just one example of what the modernization will leave.”
Modernizing the original facility would position Jefferson Regional to deliver healthcare services for the next 50 to 60 years, hospital officials believe.