Hospital Within a Hospital

Northwest Medical Center in Springdale has leased 16,000 SF of space to a Dallas company that hopes to open an acute-care, long-term hospital there by spring.

Spectrum Comprehensive Care Inc. announced the deal, which calls for $800,000 in renovations for the 31-bed facility. The space is located on the fifth floor of the hospital’s newest tower and is intended for patients who require more than 25 days of hospitalization. The facility will be the first of its kind in Northwest Arkansas and only the second in Arkansas. The state’s first acute-care, long-term hospital opened just a few months ago at Columbia Doctors Hospital in Little Rock.

Joseph N. Rosenfield, SCCI’s president and CEO, says the new facility, when it’s at full occupancy, will probably employ 75 people, primarily nurses and therapists. Long-term, acute-care is a niche, formally recognized by the Health Care Finance Administration in 1983, Rosenfield says, and such hospitals are for critically ill patients whose conditions have been stabilized in the regular acute-care hospital.

From a hospital’s perspective, such leases are a way to cope with empty beds — a result of shortened hospital stays — and to generate more revenue.

SCCI, which signed an initial seven-year lease with Northwest, currently has four acute-care, long-term hospitals and, by year’s end, expects to have seven open. The Springdale deal is SCCI’s first in Arkansas, but Rosenfield says the company continues to evaluate the state for other possible locations.