Sun News - MURRELLS INLET -- Patients needing care from several different doctors, including specialists, will be able to see all of them under one roof when a new medical office building at Waccamaw Community Hospital opens this year. The 90,000-square-foot, three-story Waccamaw Medical Park West will house a variety of specialists, including pain management, physical therapy, endoscopy and, for the first time at Waccamaw, neurosurgeons – specialists that come through a growing partnership with the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston. A dermatologist who would work in Georgetown County also is in the works through that partnership. The expansion is one of several at Grand Strand hospitals as they aim to keep up with the growing demand for health care services experts predict as baby boomers get older.
Several tenants in the new, $16 million medical center are moving from the health care offices across U.S. 17. The goal is to make it easier for patients to see multiple doctors under one roof.
“This is being done for the purpose of providing a new model of care for patients,” spokeswoman Ronda Wilson said. For example, a patient may see a primary care physician, who wants the patient to have lab work, then a stop in physical therapy. Once all the doctors move into the new building by the end of 2012, a patient can do all that without leaving the building. “It’s available [now] just in different places,” Wilson said. “This will provide a little more patient convenience.” The first medical offices are expected to move into the new building in March, though officials didn’t know yet which practices would be first. The rest will move in phases. Waccamaw, which opened in 2002 and is part of Georgetown Hospital System, kept future growth in mind when designing the new medical office building. There are roughly 40,000 square feet that hasn’t been claimed yet, including a sprawling 15,000-square-foot space on the third floor. Based on Waccamaw’s previous growth, officials don’t anticipate that space will stay empty for long.
“We had a space like that [at Waccamaw Community Hospital] but not for very long,” Wilson said, looking at the available space on the third floor. The shell of the building is complete, with workers this week busy in what will become a parking area and inside the building painting and doing other cosmetic work. The building, which has two main doors, has a massive physical therapy room on the second floor with windows overlooking U.S. 17 and a pain management clinic. Imaging, neurosciences, gastroenterology and orthopedic will be on the first floor. And there’s room to grow. “At the rate you see us moving…we are just leaving ourselves plenty of options,” said Rod Softy, construction manager for Georgetown Hospital System.
The new center reflects a medical services boom across the area. Waccamaw also added 56 medical-surgical and inpatient rehabilitation beds, Grand Strand Regional Medical Center in Myrtle Beach added a cardiac wing in the fall, and during the summer, Seacoast Medical Center in Little River added 64,000-square-feet and 50 patient beds. Brunswick Novant Medical Center opened a new 250,000-square-foot hospital with 74 beds during the summer. Officials are particularly excited about the arrival of neurosurgeons at Waccamaw who are specialized in operating on the brain, head, neck and spinal cord. “Right now we don’t have that. It’s not available,” Wilson said. The hospital system can provide that specialty through a growing partnership with MUSC. The medical office building model is one MUSC favors, with another one under construction in Mount Pleasant, said Jack Feussner, MUSC’s executive senior associate dean of clinical affairs.
“Georgetown hasn’t had a large medical office building where a lot of multiple specialties could be co-located,” Feussner said. “A patient will be able to go to one place and be able to see all the physicians they need to.” Georgetown also is working with MUSC to bring a dermatologist to the area, which Feussner said should happen in the next four months. The two have started a joint strategic planning process and have talked about using the hospitals in Georgetown for residency training for some of the MUSC grads, Feussner said. Wilson isn’t sure what will move into the space on the east side of U.S. 17 once many of those practices relocate the new building, but with the growing health care demand along the Grand Strand, she doesn’t expect it to stay empty. “My suspicion is people are lining up for the space,” Wilson said. “I would expect something to go in there pretty quickly.”
