St. Luke’s McCall will get bigger and better

The five-year journey to a “new” St. Luke’s McCall Medical Center awaits McCall city approval of design documents that St. Luke’s Health System submitted Oct. 23.

Construction is anticipated to start in spring or early summer on a two-story, 50,000-square-foot addition in the parking lot to the north of the existing hospital.

St. Luke’s is on a mission to replace a McCall hospital where nearly 50 percent of the structure is more than 60 years old and the other half is more than 20 years old. Numerous additions and renovations over the decades add up to a scenario where a public corridor has to be shut down when patients are transferred to and from the operating room and in-patient rooms.

St. Luke’s McCall expects to spend two years building the addition. Following that will be a renovation of the 15,000-square-foot addition from 1996. Then in about 2021-22, the oldest section of the hospital from 1956 will be demolished and replaced with surface parking, hospital administrator Sean McCallister said.

“We’re building for a minimum of 30 years out,” McCallister said. “We’ll have the opportunity to expand the footprint if and when needed.”

The hospital will more than double in size from about 30,000 square feet to 65,000 square feet in the $40 million project.

The addition will have an eight-bay emergency department on the ground floor with a separate ambulance entrance and expanded medical imaging, laboratory and infusion departments.

The second floor will have 13 in-patient, single occupancy room. Shared rooms around the country are being eliminated in the hospital world. St. Luke’s McCall currently has three double-occupancy rooms.

The second floor also will have three operating rooms, two labor and delivery rooms, an obstetric triage room, and 10 pre- and post-operating recovery bays.

The “new” hospital will bring St. Luke’s to up-to-date modern standards with an ability to upgrade as medical advances come forward. A sharp eye is on specifically outfitting the hospital for telemedicine, which St. Luke’s McCall is already performing in an improvised manner.

“Our intent is to wire the facility in a way to incorporate telehealth even more so in the future,” McCallister said. “The only way to lower (health care) costs is to keep people out of the hospital. We want to assure that folks don’t have to be admitted to the hospital. This (new hospital) syncs up with our focus on health and wellness.”

The architect is Hummel Architects of Boise. St. Luke’s is its own general contractor.