CoxHealth partnership breaks ground for rehab hospital

Mike McAlister: Hospital will consolidate Select Medical and CoxHealth acute rehab units.

Ashley Casad: Ozark facility will allow for more efficient staffing and provider coverage.

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After announcing a joint venture in January to bring a new inpatient rehabilitation hospital to the Ozarks, CoxHealth and a Pennsylvania-based company with a Springfield presence broke ground on the project earlier this month.

Construction is under way in Ozark for the 63-bed facility following an Aug. 14 groundbreaking ceremony that included officials with CoxHealth and Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania-based Select Medical Holdings Corp. (NYSE: SEM).

Cary Nabors, manager of public relations for CoxHealth, said the site is located on West Garton Road across from Baptist Homes of Ozark. She declined to disclose construction costs. The process of assigning an address to the building is still in the works, said Nabors, declining to disclose the ownership of the property.

“CoxHealth Rehabilitation Hospital will be part of Select Medical’s national network of more than 30 medical rehabilitation hospitals,” Nabors said, pointing to a network that includes Kessler Institute for Rehabilitation, Cleveland Clinic Rehabilitation Hospital and Baylor Scott & White Institute for Rehabilitation.

Mike McAlister, regional vice president with Select Medical, said collaborative projects are nothing new for the company.

“The vast majority of our 30 inpatient rehab hospitals are through joint venture partnerships with other large health systems, academic medical centers, etc.,” he said.

KCI Construction Co. is serving as general contractor for the roughly 63,000-square-foot, one-story building on eight acres of land, said Nabors, declining to disclose the estimated development cost. Omaha, Nebraska-based HDR Inc. is the project architect.

Rehab landscape
Select Specialty Hospital currently operates a long-term acute care hospital facility in Springfield, at 1630 E. Primrose St., which it opened in early 2008, according to Springfield Business Journal archives.

“We call them critical illness recovery hospitals to better define our setting and the care that we provide,” McAlister said of its facilities such as the Springfield hospital. “But within our hospital, we have a 16-bed acute rehab unit that operates as an inpatient rehab hospital.”

McAlister said it opened the rehab unit in its Springfield hospital in early 2023.

CoxHealth currently has 34 beds at the Meyer Orthopedic and Rehabilitation Hospital inpatient unit in Springfield and an additional 13 beds in the acute rehabilitation unit at Cox Medical Center Branson, according to health care system officials.

“It’s a consolidation of the three units that we operate collectively,” McAlister said, noting officials began discussions about the partnership in early 2022. “The two rehab units that CoxHealth operates today and the one unit that Select Medical operates today are consolidating into this one 63-bed, state-of-the-art hospital. So, we’re not increasing beds in the community.”

Ashley Casad, senior vice president and president of CoxHealth’s Springfield hospitals, said the partnership allows an opportunity to take three units and put them into one facility. The intention is to have more efficient staffing and provider coverage.

“Just knowing that technology and equipment that our patients are going to have access to and then getting to move to all private beds will be a huge win for our region, too,” Casad said. “We’re very excited that we now get to start the construction phase.”

Officials say how the rehab unit spaces in the current CoxHealth and Select Medical facilities will be utilized once the new hospital opens is under consideration.

“Since we are still about 18 months away from moving out of it, we’ll take the next 18 months to really evaluate what the best use of that space would be,” Casad said.

According to past Springfield Business Journal reporting, Select Medical is expected to operate the rehab hospital as the managing partner, with officials noting the partnership will be structured as a 51-49 relationship. Casad said the hospital administrator will report to a board of directors composed of CoxHealth and Select Medical representatives. The board and hospital leadership are yet to be determined, she said.

“For us to have the opportunity to get to partner with some experts in the field just seems like a great option for us and for the community to make sure that our patients are getting the best care possible,” Casad said of teaming with Select Medical.

The start of construction in Ozark comes a decade after Mercy Springfield Communities opened a $28 million rehabilitation hospital near the border of Greene and Christian counties at 5904 S. Southwood Road. Its 60-bed, 63,000-square-foot rehab facility represented a partnership between Mercy and Brentwood, Tennessee-based Centerre Healthcare Corp., according to past SBJ reporting.

At your service
Kristen Haseltine, president and CEO of economic development organization Show Me Christian County, said the hospital marks “a really big win” for the county. She said the organization was part of discussions to build the facility in Ozark and noted CoxHealth officials favored finding property that would provide convenient access to its Springfield and Branson facilities.

“That what’s exciting is that this is the first overnight hospital facility that we’ll have,” she said. “Cox has done a couple of super clinics in Nixa and Ozark, which is amazing. And then Mercy has several clinics as well, but this is the largest scale hospital that we’ll have.”

McAlister said he anticipates the hospital will open to patients in late 2025 or early 2026, contingent upon construction timelines.

“We specialize in treating patients recovering from a range of medical issues – stroke, brain injuries, spinal cord injury, surgery, chronic medical conditions, other neurological or life-altering conditions,” he said, noting the hospital will need about 150 full-time employees, including physicians, nurses, speech-language pathologists, occupational and physical therapists, pharmacists, dietitians and support staff.

“We anticipate there will be some team members come from any one of the existing CoxHealth or Select Medical units, but we’ll certainly be hiring for many of these positions,” McAlister added. 

Digital Editor Geoff Pickle contributed.