Sacred Heart Rep to Kiwanis Club - We're Coming

Dr. Henry Roberts, president of the Sacred Heart Foundation, made no bones about it during remarks to the Port St. Joe Kiwanis Club on Tuesday.

Progress on the new Sacred Heart hospital in Gulf County wasn't moving as fast as he desired, but forward momentum was picking up.

Patience by all was the proper diagnosis.

And although he didn't want to be held to any date for the beginning of construction on the facility for which ground has been cleared for nearly a year - he noted he'd gotten in enough trouble predicting construction dates - Roberts pointed to April 21.

That is the date, according to the general contractor, when fencing and construction trailers should arrive on the site as a signal that construction was imminent.

"Giving birth to the hospital has been a long process, and very laborious I must say," Roberts told the Kiwanis Club, which recently voted to reaffirm its commitment to donate $25,000 to the project.

"We hoped we would be vertical in March. A number of things have caused us to be slower than we had hoped."

Firstly, Roberts said, after bids were received on construction of the entire complex, including a 25-bed hospital and medical office building, Sacred Heart officials realized they were about $4 million over budget.

Thus ensued efforts to tweak the site and hospital design plans to "retrofit" the hospital to bring it in under budget, while not losing any major component of the complex, Roberts said.

"All that has been a process," Roberts added.

On the plus side, construction might have gained $1 million to the other side of the ledger due to conflicting soil sampling analysis. Once sorted out, Sacred Heart realized the foundation initially proposed as necessary for the hospital was in fact not required.

By altering the specs on the foundation a bit, Sacred Heart will save roughly $1 million.

"We are revisiting that (the foundation requirements), which is sweet for us because it will allow us to chip away at that ($4 million) override," Roberts said.

Finally, the stock market's roller coaster ride of recent months has played havoc with companies large and small, and non-profit Ascension Health Systems, a 65-hospital company of which Sacred Heart is a part, was no exception.

In turn, the release of capital for the Gulf County hospital had been slowed, though Roberts said that just Monday he was told that the capital for the project was released so the dollars are in the pipeline for the $30 million-plus facility.

And Roberts added that while construction has been delayed several times, the general contractor, Greenhut, indicated the hospital should still open in 2009.

The community, as evidenced by the Kiwanis Club's commitment, has rallied behind the hospital effort, Roberts said.

To date some $2 million has been raised in private donations from local organizations, banks, civic clubs and individuals.

In addition, Sacred Heart has a $5 million commitment from The St. Joe Community Foundation - which made its annual installment of $500,000 in January - and The St. Joe Company has donated land and initial construction costs of $1 million.

"St. Joe's commitment is there for us, for the hospital, don't doubt that," Roberts said.

The county has also been levying a half-cent sales tax for more than two years which is to be earmarked for care of the indigent, uninsured and underinsured.

Roberts said Sacred Heart had been in talks with Franklin County officials about collaborating on various health-care projects in that county, but as of yet nothing concrete had emerged and Roberts said they would not impact the construction of the hospital in Port St. Joe.

"We are on target but we've been in low gear," Roberts said. "I'd like to be in high gear and we'll get there.

"Our commitment is to Gulf County. You need a hospital. You need it sooner than later. We at Sacred Heart Health Systems are working hard on it, but it's just not fast enough, I realize. But we are committed to bringing it here just as fast as humanly possible."