October 26, 2021 |
At the construction site of the North Platte Valley Medical Center in Saratoga, the watchword is “full speed ahead.”
The outer walls of the 43,000-square-foot critical access hospital and clinic are nearly complete. So is much of the interior framing, where metal studs are in place rather than wood.
Last week, about 50 construction workers were working in the two 20-bed wings. They were “roughing in,” as construction supervisor Monty Wardell called it, installing the ductwork heat and air condition, as well as conduit for the electrical wiring.
Wardell said roofers will be on the job in early November. With a roof overhead offering protection from the weather, the sheet rock work can begin.
Pictured above: Construction Superintendent Monty Wardell answers questions from Corbett Medical Foundation Liaison Laura Bucholz during a tour of the North Platte Valley Medical Center in Saratoga. Photo by Jim O’Reilly/Bigfoot 99.
This week, crews are focusing on the electrical and mechanical rooms, installing the air handlers, boilers and other critical infrastructure. Wardell said the big equipment, still wrapped in plastic and sitting on pallets, can handle a little moisture.
By this time next year, the critical access hospital will be humming with doctors, nurses and patients. The facility will feature an emergency room, short term and long-term care, a laboratory, clinic, physical therapy, chapel and dining area.
A lot of work will be done before then. Last week, just after a fast-moving snow storm had hit the area, the wind whipped through the open wall at the ambulance entryway where our tour began. The floors were wet with standing water from melted snow. Once the roof is on and he walls are buttoned up, the interior work will begin in earnest. As our tour wound its way through the exposed guts of the place, the inner workings of a hospital were as starkly visible to the eye as bones on an x-ray. With no walls or ceilings to conceal them, only see-through the skeletal studs holding up the structure, miles of pipe and conduit stretched out above and all around us.
Wardell said the construction work will be completed in August.
Between now and then, tradesmen will be installing the plumbing running the electrical wires. Technicians will install and calibrate the specialized medical equipment you expect in any modern hospital. The grounds will be landscaped over the spring and summer. Two members of the NPVMC’s leadership team, Sonja Collamer and Laura Bucholz, agreed with Wardell that no hard date has been set for a ribbon cutting.
Collamer is the vice chair of the board that has spearheaded the effort to construct the valley’s first critical access hospital. Bucholz is the foundation liaison. In other words, she’s the fundraiser for a facility that will cost $23 million to construct and $50,000 in additional funding each year over projected revenues to operate. To get to this point in the multi-year process, the foundation needed to raise $4.5 million. That’s a lot of money during ordinary money times, let alone a global pandemic. Bucholz said they met and beat their mark.
Construction costs are being paid with a bridge loan through First Interstate Bank backed by the USDA.
Yesterday, the NPVMC’s leadership team named a chief operating officer to run the facility. Jeffrey Mincy will head administrative operations once the facility opens for business next year. Mincy will come to Saratoga from Texas, where he has served for more than a decade as clinic administrator as well as the safety/emergency management coordinator for the Coryell County Hospital Authority in Gatesville.
Mincey’s office in the administration area near the east end of the building was outlined in metal studs last week. Not much else has been done in that section of the sprawling complex. The roughing-in work had yet to begin there. We asked, why metal studs?
Straight as an arrow, and full speed ahead.
More information on the North Platte Valley Medical Center: https://npvmc.org/
