New hospital adds 20,000 square feet

St. Luke’s Wood River Community Council pondered enhancements to a site plan for the new St. Luke’s Regional Medical Center hospital, slated to be built in Cold Springs, south of Ketchum.

According to St. Luke’s officials, enhancements to the proposed facility near the McHanville area can be made because the community donated $6.6 million more than the fund drive target.

The extra funds allowed St. Luke’s to increase the medical facility’s size by 20,000 square feet, from 65,000 to 85,000.

The additional space will house a nuclear medicine diagnostic area, a fourth operating suite, a fourth birthing suite and four additional beds. The hospital’s emergency room was also expanded for advanced trauma facilities, and cardiac patient monitoring and stabilization.

The council, made up of community volunteers as an advisory body to the Boise-based St. Luke’s, focused on maximizing the site’s long-term capacity.

"Anything we can do to maximize the land available for future expansion will serve this community generations from now," stated council chairman Will Storey. "The council believes we have a responsibility to use some funds to assure that this site can meet the community’s health care needs to the end of the next century."

Site plans call for the relocation of a wetlands area, Cold Springs Canyon Road and the bike path. A multi-story facility was also discussed to enhance the site’s layout and expansion capacity in the future.

The council is looking at other ways to maximize the site’s long-term capacity, including placing patient rooms and mechanicals on the upper floor, designing medical offices integral to the hospital to avoid separate building setbacks, studying alternate employee parking to decrease parking area and encouraging medical office use within the future McHanville zone.

"From a planning standpoint, we believe the highest quality and most cost-effective approach to the development of our health care services is to eventually allow and encourage medical-care providers to be adjacent to the new hospital site," said Storey.

The Blaine County Planning and Zoning Commission made alterations to zoning in the hospital site area earlier this month. Text governing what’s allowed in a recreational development zone that regulates the site was changed to include definitions of "extended care facility," "hospital," and "public facility." Blaine County Commissioners will approve or deny the changes July 6.

St. Luke’s is expected to present building plans with an application for a conditional use permit to the county P&Z in late summer or early fall.