I-35 Corridor in Edmond coming to life.

[metro]

It looks like Saints is about to open a hospital or another freestanding ER in Edmond.

I looked the county assessors website and the deed stated Summit Development. There is also a picture of a billboard with medical listed as one of the possible tenants.

Now here is this photo from Google Maps that just so happens to show Saints Blvd with a two lane road leading to a dead end road that is listed as Saints Way.

I am starting to wonder if Edmond can support all of this. I think it will be over saturation and it will cause at least one facility to close or scale back their services. You would think they would shoot for an area that is under served. NE OKC and South OKC are very under served right now. One hospital serves the entire area meanwhile NW OKC and Central OKC has access to 2-3 hospitals depending on a persons location.

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Saints Edmond is public information. Secondly Edmond has been undeserved for years. They can support them all just fine. There is not enough money in South OKC or NE OKC to justify an upscale hospital. The average income in Edmond is much higher than elsewhere in the metro. I know SW OKC has one of the top income per zips in the state, but that is one zip code, not the entire section of town.

[Bunty]

Can we leave the social and political views in the political thread and just discuss the actual development?

No, it keeps things interesting and I find out new things I didn't know before.

[oneforone]

Saints Edmond is public information. Secondly Edmond has been undeserved for years. They can support them all just fine. There is not enough money in South OKC or NE OKC to justify an upscale hospital. The average income in Edmond is much higher than elsewhere in the metro. I know SW OKC has one of the top income per zips in the state, but that is one zip code, not the entire section of town.

I understand your argument however, this type of development (several health care facilities opening in one area especially when high incomes are in abundance) is what gives the healthcare industry a bad name.

I agree you should build where you can be profitable but at the same time some effort needs to be made at opening hospitals in areas where low income people live. There is no reason why somebody that lives in a modern city should have to drive 20 minutes to get to a hospital.

If nothing else, I think it would be a wise decision for all the hospitals to operate a partnership that serves people in lower income areas. Granted it does not need to be a super sized facility with a trauma center and speciality wards. It could be a standard hospital about the size of Moore Medical Center.

What hospital officials may not realize is that this kind of development could come back and bite them hard. I could easily see Washington writing policy or legislation that requires non profits and not for profits to open full services facilities in under served areas in order to retain their non profit/not for profit status and/or receive full healthcare funding from federal programs.

To me the news of Saints opening all these facilities tells me they have the funds to reopen St. Michael (Hillcrest) as a regular hospital. If I were a south OKC lawmaker and up for re-election I would be trying to sell Saints on re-opening St. Michael and make a public case out of it. I would be pointing out how they are building in the suburbs but, have no concern for locations they already own and operate. At the very least they could run an ER out of St. Michael.