New medical center to open
BUTLER TWP — It took three years for a group of 11 Butler County doctors and the Butler Memorial Hospital to take the Benbrook Medical Center from an idea to a brick building and surgical procedures.
Karen Maloney, executive director of the center's management firm, iLANT Management Solutions of Pittsburgh, said the Benbrook Medical Center has been the "easiest project we have worked on," of the 10 or so ambulatory medical centers the firm has managed.
She said the relationship between the doctors and the hospital is good and the iLANT staff has been able to "correct the mistakes that were made at other centers in this one." Maloney and her staff were able to advise the doctors and hospital on the design of the Benbrook center based on their experiences with other centers.
Maloney and hospitalspokesman John Righetti point to the registration rooms for the ambulatory surgical center as an example of lessons learned.
Registration at the Waterfront Surgical Center in Homestead was a simple open counter next to the waiting room seats. At Benbrook, however, considering the patients' need for privacy, small rooms were designed to receive patients before their surgical procedures.
The 56,000-square-foot, $6.4 million building houses the 16,000-square-foot outpatient surgical center, run by an 11-doctor consortium.
Total cost of the project, including equipment and amenities, is $9.5 million.
Besides the surgical center, the first floor features Dr. Constantine Balouris' ophthalmology practice and offices of the Butler Regional Cancer Center, which is moving from its current location on Route 422 in the township. The cancer center has two wings, one for radiation treatments and the other for medical oncology.
Cummings Coffee is sponsoring a coffee and snack cart in the lobby.
On the second floor of the building, iLANT has its offices, which it will occupy for the length of its six-year contract; offices for Dr. Don Walters and Dr. Rich Lasuska, both gastroenterologists; and space for Butler Memorial Hospital.
Righetti said hospital administrators originally planned to move some outpatient services from the East Brady Street hospital to the Benbrook Road facility, but last year the hospital's board of directors bought an 11-acre plot next to the surgical center.
"We are waiting for the third option study (which would move most outpatient services from the hospital to a secondary campus) results that should be ready in April before determining what will go here," Righetti said.
Maloney said the medical center is going through the licensing process with the state and federal governments, and it should be completely open to patients by the end of March.
