The decision was made public earlier this month by UNM Chancellor for Health Sciences Paul Roth during a board of directors meeting, according to the Albuquerque Journal. The main building is aging and the flagship hospital is unable to meet the demands of the increasing number of patients, he said.
“Right now we are in the planning process that includes evaluation of a replacement facility toward the main UNM hospital,” said Dr. Michael Richards, executive physician-in-chief of the UNM Health System. “This is still in the planning stages.”
UNM officials are considering the possibilities of when and where to construct the new hospital, he said.
“One of the problems that we are evaluating is that we will need a replacement hospital for the main UNM adult facility,” Richards said. “Much of that facility was built in the 1950s, and current health care facilities in hospitals require a different kind of space.”
In 2012 UHSC proposed a 96-bed hospital wing with a projected cost of $146 million, according to HSC documents.
UNMH officials said the hospital suffered from aged pipes and HVAC units, narrow halls, low floor-to-ceiling height, small rooms, inadequate physician and nurse space, obstacles in hallways, inadequate electrical systems, infection risks, noise issues, transport issues and system failures, according to the documents.
The document expressed other issues, and said the building had “ ... no backup facilities, no surge capacity, no capacity to renovate a unit, very little capability to repair a unit, no capacity in the event of a major incident, no capacity to manage Level 1 Trauma, stroke, cardiac or cancer if the Main Operating Room is compromised.”
However, the proposal had its detractors. In a letter to UNM President Bob Frank, then-Bernalillo County Commissioner Art De La Cruz objected that the new project did not go through public scrutiny and that there was a need of more debate on the issue, according to an Albuquerque Journal report.
The proposal was approved by the UNM Hospitals Board of Trustees, HSC Board and UNM Board of Regents in 2012. However, UNMH could not get approval from the State Board of Finance.
Richards said UNMH is in dire need of a new hospital because of the increasing number of referrals from other facilities.
“UNMH’s current facility does not have adequate capacity for operation care demands,” he said. “UNM hospital serves a very unique role not just for the community, but for the state of New Mexico, because of the very unique clinical services that we provide.”
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UNMH is the state’s only trauma center and children’s hospital, he said.
“We receive lots of transfers from around the state,” he said. “Last year we were unable to accept 530 transfers of individuals that needed care at the level that we provide ... we were unable to accept those cases because of the inadequate space.”
UNMH sees about 25,000 admissions, 25,000 surgeries and 900,000 clinical visits per year across the health system, he said.
A large number of patients are forced to travel to neighboring states for treatment due to the lack of capacity and long waiting hours at UNMH, according to UNM officials.
The documents for the 2012 plan included the story of a 4-year-old asthmatic male with who was admitted to the pediatric clinic at noon, but did not receive a bed for 30 hours.
“We have not made a final determination on the exact clinical space needs and beds,” Richards said. “That would have to occur before we could make financial projections.”
Sayyed Shah is the assistant news editor at the Daily Lobo. He can be contacted at assistant-news@dailylobo.com or on Twitter @mianfawadshah.
