Hospitals aid East Valley boom areas

The prognosis for health care in underserved areas of the East Valley is looking up as one hospital prepares to open in Gilbert and the design on another in Pinal County nears completion.

Banner Health is opening Banner Gateway Hospital in Gilbert on Sept. 18 and plans to start construction of Banner Ironwood in Pinal County as soon as late 2007.

The on-schedule Banner Gateway, on 60 acres on the southwest corner of U.S. 60 and Higley Road, will offer a 176-bed, five-story patient tower, state-of-the-art surgical suites and a three-story treatment wing, Banner Health spokeswoman Susan Gordon said.

Gordon said the hospital was built with expansion plans to reach up to 500 beds, but that expansion depends on continued growth.

“The growth in this area is one of the reasons we’re located here,” she said. “As the population grows the number of hospi- tal beds is not enough for the number of people.”

Around the same time Banner Gateway opens, the company will close its Banner Mesa hospital at Brown Road and Country Club Drive. But East Valley hospitals, particularly those in the boom areas such as Gilbert, will continue to see more patients than original projections indicated.

Catholic Healthcare West, which opened Gilbert Mercy Hospital at Val Vista Drive and the Loop 202 Santan Freeway in June 2006, has been making plans to expand since the hospital’s doors opened. Gilbert Hospital, at Power Road and Galveston Street, opened in February 2006, and officials report seeing twice as many patients as projected.

That need is particularly large in Pinal County where the only hospital in the county is Casa Grande Regional Medical Center.

In late 2007 or early 2008, Banner Health will begin construction on an 80-acre medical campus in Pinal County southeast of Queen Creek on Gantzel Road south of Combs Road to be called Banner Ironwood. The facility was originally planned to open in early 2008.

“The design stages took a little longer than what was initially anticipated,” Banner spokeswoman Renee Moe said. “It’s a matter of trying to make sure we get the right design for the initial phase one.”

The facility will be built in phases, the first with an emergency room, medical imaging and lab services, and a medical office building, Moe said.

“Eventually we’ll have a phase two to include a full-service hospital,” Moe said. “It will be built when the population growth can support it.”

Growth is what attracted the health care provider to the Pinal County area.

“This site was picked because it was central to what we knew about population growth out there,” said Craig Jensen, system director for new site development for Banner Health.

Banner Ironwood is expected to serve the estimated 550,000 to 600,000 population at buildout. Jensen describes Banner Ironwood’s market area as the shape of an egg, leaning west toward Queen Creek and taking in the Hunt Highway and areas to its north.

Jensen said the first phase is to get the critical medical care in as soon as possible.

“When you look at the buildout in that area, there’s certainly enough there to support a major medical center.” Jensen said, noting that there are already an estimated 75,000 to 80,000 people with almost no medical services. “When we actually build a hospital tower, that will be totally dependent on population.”

He said the slowing housing market in the area will affect how rapidly other services are added at Banner Ironwood. A larger aging population will create more of a need for a hospital than a population of mostly younger families, he said.

“What we don’t know is if this is a temporary blip or an adjustment to a slower growth,” Jensen said. “It depends on what demographic grows the fastest as well.”

Tereca Garner, who has lived off of Hunt Highway for more than 14 years, said she has a family doctor in Queen Creek but has to drive to Phoenix, Mesa and other areas if she has to go to a specialist or have medical tests done.

“I think a full fledged hospital is overdue,” said Garner, a mother and grandmother. “I think it’s really needed with all the growth out here. For an emergency it makes you nervous with all the traffic.”

She said she regularly sees helicopters taking car crash victims away from the Hunt Highway because there’s nothing in driving distance for emergency care.

“This is really needed in the southeast portion of the Valley,” she said. Jensen agreed the area is “tremendously underserved.”

“Our perception is that those people are at risk, and it’s just a pain for them to get to health care,” he said. “It shouldn’t be that way.”