State sets conditions for UNC in plans for Hillsborough facility

BY BETH VELLIQUETTE

bvelliquette@heraldsun.com; 918-1042

CHAPEL HILL -- The state of North Carolina has granted UNC Hospitals conditional approval to build a 68-bed acute care hospital in Hillsborough.

The hospital will include 18 intensive care unit beds, 15 observation beds, six shared operating rooms and a small emergency room.

The hospital will be located in the Waterstone development north of the I-40 and Old 86 interchange on 83.4 acres of land on the south side of Hillsborough.

UNC Hospitals signed a letter of intent to purchase the land in March, and hopes to finalize the purchase this week, said Ray Lafrenaye, vice president of facilities planning and development for UNC Hospitals.

The price for the land is about $17.4 million, and the conditional approval states the capital expenditure for the hospital will be $226.6 million.

The emergency room will not be a trauma center like the one in Chapel Hill, so if a person experiences a life-threatening event, the patient still would be transported to the trauma center at UNC Hospitals in Chapel Hill for treatment, Lafrenaye said.

The hospital in Hillsborough won't actually expand the number of beds at UNC Hospitals. Instead, it's considered a transfer, with the number of beds in Chapel Hill decreasing by 68 so that the Hillsborough site can acquire 68 beds.

It's likely that the 68 beds that will be taken out of commission in Chapel Hill will be ones that are in some of the older semi-private rooms, Lafrenaye said. Those rooms likely will be converted into private rooms.

"We're moving existing volume ... because we're full all the time," he said.

There are still decisions to be made as to what programs will be moved from Chapel Hill to the Hillsborough site.

The approval contains 15 conditions that UNC Hospitals must agree to, and if it doesn't agree with them, it can file an appeal within 35 days. Various division heads and hospital administrators will be reviewing the conditions to decide whether to appeal or not, Lafrenaye said.

For example, the application UNC Hospitals sent to the state said the Hillsborough campus would include one vascular and interventional radiology room, but the conditional approval document states that UNC Hospitals shall not acquire the equipment or develop a vascular interventional radiography procedure room in Hillsborough.

It also appears to forbid UNC Hospitals from performing endoscopies at the Hillsborough campus.

The approval includes a timetable that states the hospital would be ready for occupancy by July 1, 2013, but Lafrenaye said it's more likely that the hospital would be completed near the end of 2013 or the beginning of 2014.

"We've just getting a construction manager working on this," he said.

"All in all we're happy about the approval, and we're checking things that were conditional that we need to discuss, but for the most part we're happy with the approval," Lafrenaye said.