New facility has open date slated for September, HCH CEO looking forward to continued partnership
Last Friday, Mission Health and HCA Healthcare invited members of the media to tour the new 82,500 square-foot facility in Franklin, and Highlands-Cashiers Hospital CEO Tom Neal said they are excited to continue their partnership with Angel Medical Center in its new location.
“This is exciting,” Neal said. “I think a new start of the art hospital for our area is a great step forward in making sure we have great healthcare in the region. As far as Angel Medical Center, since I have been in here, we have been partnering on things like physician recruitment, staffing and COVID response. We will continue to work with them on that.”
With the new base for MAMMA being located at the new medical center in Franklin, Neal said that is a huge positive for patients in the Highlands-Cashiers area.
“One of our biggest challenges can be transporting a patient in this mountainous area,” Neal said. “Having a helicopter a few minutes away is very reassuring.”
Neal said the new facility will have some higher levels of care.
“They have an ICU in the hospital, so sometimes we have critical patients that need to be transferred there,” Neal said. “Though we have started back our operating program, it is only elective. So, often we will have a patient that needs more urgent medical needs, and we can send them down to Angel. They clearly have a little more than we do, but they are a great partner, and we definitely use them to transport patients for continuing care.”
The $68 million, 82,500-square foot facility has been under construction at One Center Court off US 441 since May 2021. It’s been a long eight months since then, with COVID-19 posing staffing and supply issues the entire time. Construction superintendent David Sibilio said his team had to work with specialized equipment to deal with stubborn granite deposits and that weather has been a major roadblock for the project as well, with heavy rain throughout last summer and intense cold and snow in the last few weeks. Fortunately, crews have made up for lost time wherever possible and the hospital should still be finished by the end of June.
“Weather has been an issue, especially when we were pouring the concrete, but we were able to adapt and overcome,” Sibilio said.
About five months out from the deadline, the building still has a long way to go before it’s ready for patients, but the vision is taking shape. The new 30-bed hospital will have three operating rooms, dedicated endoscopy and radiology space and a 17-bed emergency room including three dedicated behavioral health beds. In addition to new services provided, Mission Health has touted the extra space in the facility as one of its biggest selling points, and the spacious rooms on the second floor illustrate that.
“The operating rooms are a little over twice the size of the ones we have at the current hospital, and those are pretty big,” Angel Medical Center CEO Clint Kendall said during the tour.
Questions remain about what will become of the current hospital once Angel Medical Center moves out. Franklin Mayor Jack Horton took a tour of the current hospital and was happy with the condition it is in, although some outdated infrastructure including asbestos will need to be modified. Town officials are researching options that other municipalities have employed for abandoned hospitals, including converting them into affordable housing. Whatever happens, Horton promised that the best interest of town residents would be fundamental to the plan.
“It’s a central part of our town, so we want to play an involved role in what happens with it,” Horton said of the building.
Kendall agreed that maximizing the value of the old facility for Macon County residents would be a top priority.
“We have people on site this week surveying the old hospital,” Kendall said. “We’re going to figure it out.”
The new Angel Medical Center is due for completion by Wednesday, June 29 and the facility should start welcoming in patients this fall.
Christopher Lugo and Jake Browning with The Franklin Press contributed to this article.