Published: June 04, 2009 07:13 pm      

$7.3 million expansion announced by LCRH

Hospital will add 45 new rooms this fall making it one of the largest rural medical facilities in Kentucky

Lake Cumberland Regional Hospital will begin a $7.3 million expansion this fall to add 45 new beds, making it one of the largest rural hospitals in Kentucky with a total of 304 beds when construction is complete in 2011.

Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services, Division of Certificate of Need, in March approved the additional beds for the Somerset hospital. First public announcement of the addition was made Tuesday during the June membership meeting of the Somerset-Pulaski County Chamber of Commerce.

“We hope to have the new beds ready for the flu season in 2011,” said Jeff Seraphine, president and CEO of Lake Cumberland Regional Hospital. Construction is expected to start during the fourth quarter this year and the project will take about a year to complete.

Some 33 of the new beds will be on the fourth floor of the hospital tower erected in 2005. Seraphine said this space was left a “shell” area for future expansion when the tower was built. Another 12 beds will be added during current renovation of the hospital that started two years ago and is expected to be completed in October. Between eight and 12 of the new beds will be critical care and the remainder medical and surgical, he said.

Seraphine said application for the additional beds was made last October. Approval was not based on need for new hospital beds in the local planning area, but on the occupancy rate of Lake Cumberland Regional Hospital that exceeds the state’s threshold, he revealed. The Division of Certificate of Need’s approval is mandatory to prevent proliferation of health care facilities that would increase cost of quality health care.

Seraphine said Lake Cumberland Regional Hospital stays busy. “We will admit 13,000 people this year; we will do 12,000 surgeries; some 36,000 people will come through the Emergency Room; and we will have between 65,000 to 70,000 outpatient visits.” He said patients often must wait in the Emergency Room or other areas of the hospital until a bed is available.

About 40 percent of patients at Lake Cumberland Regional Hospital comes from outside Pulaski County, Seraphine said. The hospital’s primary service area is Pulaski, McCreary, Russell, Wayne and Clinton counties.

Seraphine said the Somerset hospital is growing because of the need for its heart, neurosurgical, orthopedic, bariatric and gastroenterology programs.

“We are such a regional hospital ... so many of our services are not performed at other area hospitals,” he noted. The hospital has grown tremendously since is was built by Humana in 1976. Humana succeeded the municipally owned Somerset City Hospital that was located at 525 Bourne Avenue in the building now occupied by Britthaven.

Humana later sold the hospital to Columbia HCA, a health-care conglomerate that later split into three parts, one of which is LifePoint, headquartered in Brentwood, Tenn. and the current owner of Lake Cumberland Regional Hospital.

One of the Pulaski County’s largest employers, Lake Cumberland Regional Hospital has 1,200 employees and an annual payroll of about $65 million.

The hospital has an active medical staff of 130 physicians. “Within the last two-and-a-half years we’ve spent about $6 million on recruitment of 35 doctors,’ Seraphine said.