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BEAVERCREEK — Wednesday’s opening of the $135 million Soin Medical Center gives Beavercreek, a burgeoning suburb of more than 45,000 people, its first hospital — a milestone for a community that has seen meteoric growth during the past four decades.
But even as officials celebrated with an historic ribbon-cutting Friday, financial difficulties cloud the future of Kettering Health Network’s other Greene County hospital, Greene Memorial Hospital in nearby Xenia.
Soin Medical Center will be a key conduit to profitable patients in the Interstate 675 corridor for Kettering Health Network, which in recent weeks has undertaken a restructuring and laid off an undisclosed number of workers throughout the network after falling short of revenue targets.
Bob Mills, who with business partner Sam Morgan sold Kettering Health Network 35 acres for the hospital and a connected medical office building slated to open in April, said the hospital is an “exclamation point” in an area he described as a hub of high-paying education jobs.
Terry Burns, president of both Soin Medical Center and Kettering Health Network’s Greene Memorial, said some 4,000 people applied for 310 jobs at Soin, the equivalent of 252 full-time positions.
Rick Perales, president of the Greene County commission, said Friday that the new Beavercreek hospital wouldn’t come at the expense of residents of eastern Greene County. “We are commissioners representing the whole county, not just the western side, not just Beavercreek and Fairborn and Bellbrook,” Perales said. “We represent the folks in Bowersville and Jamestown and Cedarville, and it was important for us to make sure that their quality of life and health care did not go down while everyone’s on the west side went up.”
Perales said former health network CEO Frank Perez guaranteed that wouldn’t happen. “I am so pleased to say that not only is this facility going to enhance the people on this side of the county, but it’s ... going to enhance the other side. They’ve put millions of dollars into Greene Memorial.”
In fact, however, the future of Greene Memorial is uncertain. The Xenia hospital lost $3 million in 2010. It remains unprofitable, even after it closed its inpatient psychiatric and rehabilitation units last month, Burns said.
Following Friday’s ribbon-cutting, Burns told the Dayton Daily News he wanted to talk only about Soin Medical Center. But when asked about concerns in the community that Greene Memorial might be further downsized or perhaps even close, Burns framed that hospital’s future as a choice for Greene County residents.
“If the county will support that facility, it will be there,” Burns said of the Xenia hospital. “It’s going to need purposeful support” from the community.
Burns also said there will be no “hose,” or outside cash infusion, “to sustain Greene Memorial in an unsustainable mode indefinitely.”
Meanwhile, Soin Medical Center’s opening comes one month before Kettering’s competitor, Premier Health Partner, opens the first of two expansions at Miami Valley Hospital South 10 miles down Interstate 675 in Centerville. Soin, named for Indu and Raj Soin, who gave more than $10 million toward the construction of the facility, will have the immediate capacity to expand to 130 beds.
According to Danis Building Construction Co., which built the hospital, there’s sufficient room to expand the hospital to house up to 300 beds.
In addition to more than 300 hospital jobs, the building of the hospital provided temporary jobs to the construction trade. John Danis, CEO of Danis Building Construction, publicly thanked Kettering Health Network executives Friday for moving forward with the project.
“It has been a tough economy ... and you have enabled me to provide employment to a lot of people, a lot of my co-workers, and you helped put food on their table,” Danis said. “And, for that, I am sincerely thankful.”
With its soothing earth hues and multistory waterfall feature — meant to create a healing environment — the building in many ways seems more like a hotel than a hospital. Private patient rooms will feature on-demand movies on 42-inch televisions, while the hospital’s GetWellNetwork will provide access to email, instant messaging and the Internet.
A public open house will be held from 1 to 4 p.m. Sunday at the hospital, 3535 Pentagon Blvd., just west of the Mall at Fairfield Commons.
Contact this reporter at (937) 225-7457.
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