By Roland Murphy for AZBEX
The Indian Health Service division of the U.S Department of Health and Human Services is exploring the possibility of a replacement facility for the Whiteriver Hospital on the Fort Apache Indian Reservation.
IHS issued a Request for Information for Architect-Engineer firms on Aug. 25. The published notice is “for Market Research to determine if a set aside can fulfill the requirements set forth in this request for information.”
The Service expects to issue a Request for Proposal for AE services to design a replacement Whiteriver Hospital, “a 395,844 gross square foot building.” The selected firm will handle preparing the construction documents package a general contractor will use to build the replacement hospital.
The Current Facility
According to IHS profile information, the current Whiteriver Indian Hospital is a 45-bed facility that serves approximately 17,000 tribal members and other Native community residents. The hospital is accredited through the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations and is staffed by 22 physicians, a nursing staff of 79 and more than a dozen additional specialized care staff members. The hospital offers general medical, pediatric, alcohol treatment, obstetrics and ambulatory surgery services. Inpatient surgery and complex care cases are referred to larger hospitals.
Indigenous/Native communities were particularly hard hit during the pandemic, in part because of the common practice of maintaining large, multi-generational households and the general remoteness and lack of readily available care facilities. Whiteriver Hospital received national attention when it served as the operations and staffing base for an aggressive contact tracing and first response outreach service program to address and try to contain the spread of COVID in its service area.
In early 2021, the hospital completed a significant renovation to expand and relocate services on its main site. According to the detailed project description in DATABEX: “The Whiteriver Indian Hospital Renovation project is the result of numerous planning efforts, including the relocation of the Dental Clinic, Physical Therapy, Eye Clinic, Satellite Pharmacy and Information Management from the main hospital building to the new Specialty Services Clinic. In addition to other required changes, this relocation… generated the need to plan for backfilling and redesign of vacated spaces in the main hospital building.”
Three areas were included as distinct areas of renovation:
- Primary Care Expansion (9,350SF)
- Emergency Fast-Track (3,000SF)
- Physical Therapy/Wound Care/Clinic ‘C’ – Orthopedics & Podiatry (2,475SF)
The resulting $5M-$10M renovation project area totaled 14,825SF.
The University of Arizona Family & Community Medicine website identifies the existing Whiteriver IHS Hospital as the largest full-spectrum family medicine model hospital in IHS system.
The Replacement Facility
The $500M replacement facility represents a significant expansion of the hospital’s service offerings. In addition to its current scope of care, the new hospital will add:
- Transitional Care,
- In-Patient Surgery,
- Mammography,
- Occupational Therapy,
- Speech Therapy and
- Comprehensive Pain Management.
The RFI notes the location is “geographically limited,” which will pose challenges in locating the 396KSF hospital and 1,335 parking spaces on a “partially sloping, 14 acres at the south side of the existing hospital campus.”
If a Notice to Proceed with design is issued, the timelines will be:
- 18 months (540 days) for design,
- Nine months (270 days) for construction solicitation, and
- 36.5 months (1,095 days) for the construction contract administration.
We contacted IHS Public Affairs asking for more background on the history of the existing hospital, the need for the replacement facility and how the existing and replacement hospitals’ facilities and service missions will transition if the project is undertaken. Director Jennifer Buschick acknowledged receiving our email and said someone would be in touch, but no contact was made before deadline.
Responses to the RFI are due by 3 p.m. Central time on Sept. 22. The Notice, additional information and attachments are available here.
