St. John’s Hospital is building a $6.9 million outpatient center on Springfield's south side to prepare for what St. John’s officials say could be an onslaught of newly insured patients and changes in the way hospitals are paid under federal health-care reform.
Construction of St. John’s Health Center-South 6th Street will improve health care and make it more convenient without raising rates for patients, St. John’s chief executive officer Bob Ritz said Tuesday.
“In fact, it provides a lower-cost arena for us to provide patient care,” Ritz said at a news conference at the site, where construction has been under way for several months. The center will be at 1100 E. Lincolnshire Blvd., just north of Wal-Mart.
The project is part of efforts by St. John’s to establish outpatient primary care services and locations. About a dozen primary care doctors employed through its parent organization, Hospital Sisters Health System, work in the Springfield area, and that number is expected to double over the next year.
St. John’s main local competitor, Memorial Medical Center, has operated a primary-care physician network for years, with more than 50 doctors in Springfield and nearby communities. Memorial has been adding locations, as well.
To open by February
St. John’s new center, scheduled to open by February, will house some services, such as the St. John’s sleep lab and its Center for Interventional Pain Management, that will be moved from the main hospital campus.
The new facility also will provide outpatient laboratory and imaging services, such as magnetic resonance imaging, computerized tomography, bone density, ultrasound and traditional X-ray. 
Ritz said offering outpatient services outside the hospital’s downtown campus is important because St. John’s is asking state officials to approve $162 million in renovations there. The four-year project — the largest in the hospital’s 135-year history -- “will be very disruptive for many of our outpatient services,” he said.
The location of the new facility was based on a study of travel patterns and demographics.
The center will provide walk-in, non-emergency care without an appointment as well as primary care appointments. A half-dozen primary care doctors will staff the center, along with two cardiologists from Prairie Cardiovascular Consultants.
A total of about 50 people will work at the center, but only a few new jobs are expected to be created because many jobs will be moved from the main campus, St. John’s spokesman Brian Reardon said.
More to have insurance
The federal health-care reform bill — by expanding the Medicaid program, creating health-insurance exchanges and providing subsidies to help people pay for health insurance — is expected to add 32 million Americans to the ranks of the insured.
Hospitals across the country are establishing outpatient centers and hiring primary care doctors, nurse practitioners and other providers to help meet what experts say is a pent-up demand for services by people who now don’t have health insurance or are under-insured.
St. John’s is making those same preparations, Ritz said.
The reform bill, as well as private insurance, also will require health-care providers to become more efficient in caring for patients, he said.
Dean Olsen can be reached at 788-1543.
More to come
St. John’s Health Center-South 6th Street is the fourth of six outpatient facilities that St. John’s Hospital has opened or plans to open in the Springfield area.
The center is one mile south of the Memorial ExpressCare and physician office building that was opened in spring 2009 at 2950 S. Sixth St. by Memorial Health System, the parent organization of Memorial Medical Center.
One of the remaining two St. John’s facilities is a building at 2329 N. Dirksen Parkway that is being renovated for $800,000 and is expected to open later this year. It will offer walk-in care and appointment-based primary care from four doctors and two nurse practitioners.
That center will be about two blocks from the Memorial ExpressCare that opened last spring at 3220 Atlanta St.
The other St. John’s facility — St. John’s Health Center-Panther Creek — will be built on a three-acre parcel on the west side of Veterans Parkway near St. John’s Health Center-Prairie Crossing.
St. John’s Hospital outpatient care centers
*Springfield Priority Care, 1836 S. MacArthur Blvd., acquired in 2008.
*Springfield Priority Care, 3631 S. Sixth Street, opened in December.
*St. John’s Health Center-Prairie Crossing, 4337 Conestoga Drive, opened in February.
*St. John’s Health Center-Rochester, opened in April.
*St. John’s Health Center-North Dirksen Parkway, expected to open in the next three months.
*St. John’s Health Center-South Sixth Street, expected to open by February 2011.
*St. John’s Health Center-Panther Creek. Construction not yet under way. Opening date not scheduled.
Photo: A schematic of St. John's Health Center-South Sixth Street -- Courtesy of St. John's Hospital.
