Victory Healthcare, a for-profit community medical center firm based in The Woodlands, Texas, will lease property to reopen and operate The Hospital at Craig Ranch, a 24-bed surgical hospital in McKinney, Texas.
Built in 2009 by the former Cirrus Group, the facility includes four intensive care beds, seven operating rooms and three special procedure rooms, and will focus on spine, orthopedic and bariatric surgeries.
The hospital was closed in January this year, months after Cirrus merged with another organization. Newly launched Forge Realty Partners purchased the 113,000-square-foot property, which includes roughly equal-size sections of hospital and medical office space. Victory will lease about 80 percent of the space from Forge and intends to open the hospital for surgery in late August, according to a news release.
The hospital's interior features harken back to the stronger economic circumstances during which it was designed, including granite countertops in large, private patient suites. Although financial details of the property acquisition have not been disclosed, Victory Chairman, CEO and Founder Robert Helms, Jr., says the facility has been on his radar since November 2012.
Mr. Helms, who was a junior partner of the firm that launched Cancer Treatment Centers of America, says he expects this hospital — like Victory's seven others — to turn a profit in its first month open, generating between 90 and 100 cases per month and growing to perform as many as 400 per month. About 120 employees will man the hospital, including 25 to 30 syndicated physicians. It will also maintain a one-to-one nurse-to-patient ratio, Mr. Helms says.
Josh Ihde, managing partner at Forge, said his realty firm was able to buy the hospital below its replacement cost. "We couldn't build it for what we bought it for," he said. That sweetened a deal that was already attractive, in part because of Texas' booming population growth, coupled with an influx of newly insured residents next year under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.
The physician shortage will likely be exacerbated by bolstered demand for medical care brought on by a an uptick in the number of insured residents. But Mr. Ihde says "there's really a shortage in the market for quality, class-A medical space" in the area, because physicians will expand their practices using advanced practitioners.
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