ThedaCare skipped the usual golden shovels at the groundbreaking Thursday for the new ThedaCare Medical Center-Shawano.
Instead, the area’s biggest health care provider used child power to move the first mounds of dirt on what Shawano Medical Center CEO Dorothy Erdmann described as “one-stop shopping” for medical needs.
The facility will replace Shawano Medical Center, which has served the community for 82 years.
“When you think of how we deliver health care, so much has changed, but so much hasn’t. Those values from 80 years ago will guide us as we go forward,” Erdmann said. “In a way, it’s going to be high-touch, but yet high technology. We are going to balance that so you’re confident it’s quality care.”
Plans for the new hospital date back to 2010 when ThedaCare and SMC merged and promised the community a replacement medical center, according to Dr. Dean Gruner, ThedaCare CEO.
Thinking big was vital, Gruner said, as ThedaCare wanted to provide more than a “Band-Aid” approach to Shawano’s future health needs.
The new $50 million facility will be an integrated campus that combines the existing clinic at 100 County Road B with 25 beds for the hospital portion and the rehab facility currently housed on North Main Street. The SMC Foundation is working to raise $1.5 million from the community, with $250,000 of upfront money and a $500,000 matching grant, to help build the medical center.
Erdmann said she hopes that, with the current facility’s track record of eight out of 10 surgeries being outpatient procedures, the beds will not see much use. With outpatient procedures, Shawano’s medical traffic is comparable with other ThedaCare facilities, including Neenah and Appleton, Erdmann said.
“That’s exactly what we’re building here, a medical center that’s much more outpatient but yet still has in-patient beds,” Erdmann said. “We’re going to have the flexibility to change over the next 80 to 100 years.”
The facility will utilize as much green technology as possible, Erdmann said, which will save money that then can be put into patient care.
It is the first time ThedaCare has built a hospital, Gruner said.
“We have never built, in the last 25 years, a new hospital or a replacement hospital,” he said. “This is literally breaking new ground.”
The existing hospital has paid its dues, said Dick Koeppen, SMC board chairman. The new medical center will not only be a great advancement in medical care, he said, but will also go beyond the daydreaming and show solid planning for decades to come.
“This will go down in Shawano’s history for many, many years to come,” Koeppen said.
The new facility will herald a new chapter for the community, said Reed Hall of the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation. It means more money flowing into the community as the state-of-the-art facility is expected to help attract industry and commercial businesses to the area, he said.
“Not only the building of a facility, but the administration of the facility adds a great deal to the economic development of a community,” Hall said. “Companies will not relocate to a community without great health care. They won’t move their executives here. What you’re doing is positioning yourself for the future.”
Health care generates more than $28 million in economic development statewide, Hall said, and accounts for 9 percent of the state’s workforce.
The Boldt Co. of Appleton is the project’s general contractor and construction manager, and HGA Architects and Engineers of Milwaukee is the architect.
Categories
