State and community leaders Saturday heralded the opening in Bellevue of a place that most desire but few want to need a hospital.
Although its ribbon-cutting celebration took place Saturday, Bellevue Medical Center will open to patients May 17.
In an hourlong ceremony outside the entrance, speakers said a Bellevue hospital was a long time coming. They called it a historic day for the city south of Omaha.
“The only thing Bellevue has not had is its own hospital, and that changes today,” said Dr. Roy Holeyfield Jr., vice chairman of the hospital's board.
Most residents of the city of about 50,000 have never enjoyed the comfort of knowing they had a community hospital nearby.
Offutt Air Force Base in Bellevue had Ehrling Bergquist Hospital, but it closed as a hospital five years ago and now serves as a clinic during the day.
Holeyfield described a patient of his, a Bellevue woman who needs hip surgery.
“She asked me, ‘Isn't that hospital done yet?'” Holeyfield said. When he told her it soon would be, she delayed the surgery until she could use the hospital, he said.
That reflects the importance of the facility to Bellevue residents, he said.
“They wanted this hospital,” he said. “They need and deserve it.”
Among the speakers were Gov. Dave Heineman and U.S. Sen. Ben Nelson.
Nebraska Medical Center, UNMC Physicians (clinical faculty members at the University of Nebraska Medical Center) and some private-practice physicians will own the hospital.
Hospital staffers and officials also held an open house Saturday for the public.
The five-level building includes 102 beds and will remain open 24 hours a day. It will house an emergency department, intensive care services, a maternity ward, cardiology area and other departments and amenities.
Lorraine Buesing, emergency room manager of the hospital, estimated that ambulances will bring eight to 10 patients daily to the emergency area.
Speakers didn't deny that the hospital's opening has been jeopardized by threats from Washington, D.C., to physician-owned medical centers.
Dr. Richard Osterholm, chairman of the hospital's board, said Nelson and others argued for Bellevue Medical Center, contending it won't be a typical physician-owned hospital.
For instance, the NU Medical Center trains many of the Air Force's family physicians, and Bellevue Medical Center will play a role in that training, Osterholm said.
Further, the hospital will serve not only Bellevue civilians but retired and active members of the military in Bellevue and at Offutt.
Nelson said he also helped push back a deadline that would have restricted the hospital's ability to receive Medicare payments.
He said “government had to be moved out of the way” so the hospital could flourish.
Contact the writer:
444-1123, rick.ruggles@owh.com
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