By Jill Nagy
An outpatient surgery center may soon join Ellis Hospital’s medical center in Clifton Park.
The hospital applied in September for a Certificate of Need from the state Department of Health to build the $13.6 million facility. The certificate is needed to allow construction of the center to commence.
Plans call for a multi-specialty ambulatory surgery center in a building at 105 Sitterly Road, adjacent to the emergent care facility that opened in 2012, hospital officials said. The two buildings would be connected.
Initially, the new facility would have two operating rooms on the first floor with room for future expansion to four operating theaters. A second floor would have medical offices. The total building would be just over 40,000 square feet.
Ellis Hospital, a Schenectady-based facility, would build and own the new building and its equipment and lease them to Ellis Ambulatory Surgery Center LLC, an entity owned jointly by the hospital and physicians practicing in the new surgical center, officials said.
Ellis Surgical Specialists, LLC, would have a 95 percent membership interest in the center; the remaining 5 percent would be owned by Latham plastic surgeon Dr. Lucie Kapek, according to a spokesperson for the project. The hospital is described as a passive member of the consortium.
The application to the Department of Health anticipates a volume of 1,516 cases during the first year of operation, increasing to 1,608 by the third year, the spokesperson said. Most of those cases, according to the application, are currently being performed at Ellis. The physicians being recruited to join the new center already work cooperatively with the hospital.
“The success of the Medical Center of Clifton Park, Ellis Medicine’s 24/7 emergent care facility, pointed the way for this expansion,” according to a statement from Wendy Rosher, vice president of operations and strategic planning for Ellis Medicine. “The growing population of Southern Saratoga County presents Ellis with a unique opportunity for expansion. This Clifton Park proposal complements our other operations in Schenectady County, given the patient mix, demand for these services and proximity to our other three main campuses—Ellis Hospital, the McClellan Street Health Center and Bellevue Woman’s Center.”
Rosher noted that recent surgical advances allow a growing number of formerly inpatient surgeries to be performed on an outpatient basis.
Hospital officials estimated that construction would take 11 months.
The new facility would create some new jobs in addition to those of the physician-owners, but a spokesperson said it was too soon to say how many or what type of jobs would be involved.