Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, August 3, 1995 TAG: 9508030021
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: STEPHEN FOSTER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Long
Standing in the murky fog of early morning and surrounded by downed trees and brush, Lester "Skip" Lamb, Radford Community's president and chief executive, made the official announcement at the site at Plantation and Prices Fork roads.
"Our goal is to try to make this reflective of what the community needs and wants," Lamb said. "We're excited about the prospect of coming to the Blacksburg area."
Radford Community Hospital plans to invest about $1 million in the facility, to be named the Carilion Blacksburg Center. It will have at least three full-time physicians as well as a rotating staff of doctors, and will employ about 25 people. Lamb said it would open by early next summer.
Carilion Health System, which owns Radford Community, paid $600,000 for the 10-acre plot, according to Montgomery County land records. That amount, paid to businessman Deon Smith, was more than twice the $250,000 that Smith paid developer J.D. Nicewonder for the land in 1993. It could not be determined Wednesday whether the million-dollar investment included the $600,000 land price.
The plot, adjacent to the Red Lion Inn, was part of the "land swap" deal that Nicewonder and developer William Matthews worked with Virginia Tech in 1986. In that controversial exchange, Tech gave the developers the 220 acres at U.S. 460 and Virginia 114 in Christiansburg in exchange for 1,700 acres that Tech uses for agricultural research. Tech also gave Nicewonder the small plot near the Red Lion.
Last month, the competition between the nonprofit Carilion and Columbia/HCA Healthcare Corp., the nation's largest for-profit hospital chain, manifested itself when Montgomery Regional Hospital and Pulaski Community Hospital announced plans to build a hospital in Radford. That plan, if allowed, could thwart Radford Community's earlier-announced plans to build a new $60 million health care facility just outside the city limits.
Lamb said Wednesday that the hospital began exploring the potential of a Blacksburg facility as early as five years ago. About 25 percent of Radford Community's patients live in Montgomery County, and Lamb said establishing the clinic reflects a desire to bring primary medical care closer to the patients who need it. He cited the hospital's clinics in Fairlawn, Dublin, Floyd County and Hillsville as part of the same desire.
"This is part of our overall planning effort," he said.
The clinic would provide primary care services like family care, pediatrics, OB/GYN services and internal medicine. Hospital representatives plan to talk to residents this month to find out what other services they may be interested in.
Judy Tynan, spokeswoman for Montgomery Regional Hospital, said her reaction to the Carilion announcement "isn't one of surprise."
The move merely reflects a nationwide change in the health-care marketplace away from acute care at hospitals and toward the use of regional clinics with flexible hours, she said.
Montgomery Regional has opened three regional family care centers across the New River Valley in the past year, including one in Fairlawn just a short distance from Radford Community Hospital. It plans to open a fourth clinic this fall in Blacksburg.
"What you're doing is providing easy access to health care," Tynan said.
Yet she suggested there one downside to the new Carilion clinic: possibly oversaturating the market with physicians.
"It's not going to do anything to the hospital. But some of the family doctors in the area that have built up a very solid practice, that might be a concern to them," Tynan said. "The last thing you want to do is bring more doctors than the people need to an area."
However, in an apparent marketing coup, Lamb said that one of the doctors who will practice at the clinic will be Dr. C.L. Boatwright, a general practitioner who has worked in Blacksburg for more than 40 years.
"Dr. Boatwright is highly respected in the Blacksburg community," Lamb said. "His participation in this venture reflects our commitment to providing the highest quality health care possible."
Susan Lockwood, the Radford hospital's spokeswoman, said the hospital often tries to entice a local well-known physician to be the cornerstone of its new clinics. "It's typical to go in with some kind of foundation," she said.
Later Wednesday, Boatwright admitted he had felt uncomfortable as he stood with hospital board members and others as Lamb made the 7:45 a.m. announcement to reporters. He shied away from the insinuation that the move is a tactic to bring his patient base exclusively to Radford Community.
"I'm on the road to retirement," Boatwright said. Carilion's purchase of his practice will allow his seven-employee staff to have somewhere to work when that time comes, and he will be allowed to work three- or four-day weeks at the clinic. Also, he hopes to introduce his patients to a Colorado doctor who will join him at his office on Church Street in the fall and later at the clinic - "not just leave them in the lurch."
by CNB