Motivated partly by the fear that national health-care reform could limit its ability to grow, Post Falls-based Northwest Specialty Hospital is spending $7 million to expand its facilities, says CEO Ron Rock.

The physician-owned surgical hospital, which opened in fall 2003, has launched a project to add 15,000 square feet of space to its 47,000-square-foot hospital at 1593 E. Polston, in Post Falls. The expansion will enable Northwest Specialty Hospital to add two additional operating rooms, giving it six. It also will add 12 inpatient rooms, giving it 23 single-occupancy rooms as it also will convert 11 inpatient rooms that have two beds into single-occupancy rooms, Rock says. It will double the number of recovery beds, where patients are taken right after surgery, to 14, and will increase what are called monitored-care beds to four, from one, he says.

The expansion project, which is under way and is expected to be completed in December, is being built by Polin & Young Construction Inc., of Coeur d'Alene. The architect is CFP Group LLC, of Nashville, Tenn.

Northwest Specialty Hospital currently is licensed for 22 inpatient beds. The hospital's patients want single-occupancy inpatient rooms, and the hospital is reacting to that desire, Rock says. With the addition, the hospital will have 23 inpatient rooms, but will use one of those rooms for another purpose, he says.

It has applied to the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare to be licensed for 37 inpatient beds, Rock says. Approval of that request is pending, and being licensed for 37 beds would give the hospital options for future growth. There are no immediate plans for construction to grow beyond the 23 single-occupancy inpatient rooms, he says.

The hospital currently employs 125 people in various support roles and has 88 doctors on its medical staff. It is owned by 19 doctors and Rock.

The hospital is attached by an enclosed walkway to a 44,800-square-foot medical office building that is owned by the same group, he says. That office building has 11 tenants and is fully occupied, Rock says.

The new space should be enough to accommodate the hospital's growth needs for the next five to 10 years, Rock says.

The hospital is doing the expansion now to avoid possible government restrictions that might develop down the road and keep the hospital from being able to expand, Rock says.

"Even though physician-owned hospitals have received reports of tremendous patient satisfaction and demand nationally, there is language in all of the current legislation being considered that would eliminate any construction of future physician-owned hospitals or any expansion of existing ones," Rock says of federal legislative proposals. "This language will severely restrict our ability to meet future needs."

Surgeries performed at Northwest Specialty Care largely are in the specialty areas of bariatrics, podiatry, orthopedics, pain management, neurosurgery, plastic and reconstructive surgery, gynecology, and ear, nose, and throat. Orthopedic, bariatric, and spinal surgeries probably are among the procedures performed most often there. Bariatrics involves treatment of obesity.

The biggest drivers of growth are orthopedics and neurosurgery, Rock says.

The hospital provides services to a broad range of patients, including those covered by Medicare, Medicaid, and major private insurers, as well as direct pay by patients and indigent care, on a case-by-case basis, he says.

Perhaps the biggest difference between Northwest Specialty Hospital—the only facility of its type in the Spokane-Coeur d'Alene area—and the area's general hospitals is that it only accepts patients who need elective, rather than emergency, surgery.

Separately, Northwest Specialty Care in August opened a new occupational medicine program that will be dedicated solely to the management and treatment of injured workers. All patients' visits in the program will be with Dr. Craig Stevens and Dr. Harry Downs, the hospital says.

Also, the hospital is in the process of adding a sleep lab to help patients who have problems sleeping, Rock says.