Another big step is soon to be taken in turning 17 acres of farmland into the new home of the Acadia-St. Landry Hospital.
Acadia-St. Landry Hospital CEO Cindy Walters said, “Acadia St. Landry Hospital submitted our preliminary loan application to the USDA, and then they issued us an invite to file the full application.
“We are at the threshold. We are fixing to walk through the door. We are very optimistic. We finally got it all pretty much wrapped up. I am hoping to submit (the full loan application) in February.”
Walters announced the plan to build the new $30 million to $35 million hospital facility in July 2019. In addition to a $24 million U.S. Department of Agriculture loan, the plan to cover the cost of the hospital also includes funds generated by a millage approved last fall, $5 million in new market tax credits and a $2.12 million local bank loan.
The proposed site for the hospital is on La. 35, just south of the Church Point Wholesale facility, and the property is already owned by the hospital.
The planned hospital will be double the size of the current facility, an increase from 35,000 square feet to 70,000 square feet.
The current hospital facility is 52 years old. The hospital is licensed for 30 beds, offering inpatient services, a swing-bed program, behavioral health program, diagnostics, six physicians on staff, respiratory and rehabilitation therapy, ground and air transport. The hospital is one of 27 critical access hospitals in the state.
The full USDA loan application will include: a preliminary report; environmental studies; and a land survey and topographical information about the proposed site.
“This (the environmental study) is a review of the geological survey, a topographic map of the study site, and it was just a historical usage of the site,” Walters said. “That is required by the USDA. It was farmland.”
The application will also include a financial feasibly study and a market analysis.
“They (the USDA) are about to get an enormous amount of information, and so they are going to get our financial feasibility report, our market studies, our environmental study — they are going to be busy,” Walters said.
“It is going to be a process. What is going to happen is they are going to start going through this information and then they are going to have questions. There is going to be going back and forth with us, answering the questions and getting them their stuff timely. A lot of it is going to depend on how quickly they get questions out to us and how quickly we respond,” she sid.
Walters said she hopes to find out if the loan has been approved by the fall.
“We are very optimistic that loan will be approved,” she said. “This is what they are telling me — our consultants and our experts have told me — that they have never had a client or seen someone get invited to file the full application and have it be denied. If you get accepted to file a full blown application, we are feeling very optimistic. They (the consultants and experts) have not seen one denied or declined. We are not there yet, but they are very optimistic. Our numbers look good.”
Upon the loan’s approval, Walters said the next steps in the process of building the new facility will be to involve a construction manager, get in-depth architectural drawings of the proposed facility and get with the bond counsel to work with the district and put in place the commercial construction loan.
Walters said she would like to break ground on the project in the fall, and the construction will be an 18-24 month long project after the ground breaking. Walters said there are interested parties for the current facility should it become vacant, but she was not at liberty to discuss the subject further.
In addition to the turning in the loan application, Walters said there are other new things happening at the hospital.
The will be grand opening for the hospital’s Wound Care Clinic from 5:30 to 7 p.m. March 2 at the hospital. A grand opening for the Fleur-De-Lis Rural Health Clinic, which was purchased by the hospital in March 2020, will be held at a later date.
“This is all part of Acadia-St. Landry Hospital being on the move and initiating some aggressive plans,” Walters said. “When we did those focus groups (prior to the millage), one of the things that came out of the focus groups (was learning) what the community would utilize, what were the services that the community wanted to see happen here and the utilization of (such services).”
Walters said those in the focus groups were interested in services that include wound care, cardiology, urology, orthopedics, subspecialists and family practice doctors. Walters said subspecialists will rotate at the health clinic.
“We are also on an aggressive physician recruitment initiative,” Walters added. “We are looking to recruit new residents coming out of medical school and looking to locate to the Acadiana area.”
Walters said that in the coming weeks, she will meet with the section chief of Family Medicine along with the program director of the Family Medicine Center of LSU Health Sciences Center.
“The beauty of having the LSU training programs here in Acadiana makes recruiting a bit easier as well as providing quality healthcare to our community,” she said.
Equipment upgrades at the hospital were also made with funds provided by the CARES Act, and those purchases include two new Tru-D UVC Light Robots that are used to disinfect the hospital and a new portable x-ray machine.
