Henderson Hospital doesn’t have to wait for patients as it opens for business
HENDERSON — The new Henderson Hospital barely had opened its doors for the first time Monday when it received its first patients.
Within about 30 minutes of its official 8 a.m. opening, the hospital had logged in three ambulance patients, a walk-in emergency case and another patient being prepped for shoulder surgery.
Hospital CEO Sam Kaufman said the early influx shows how the facility’s presence in Henderson and its location near several master-planned communities, including Cadence, will improve local residents’ health care access and reduce emergency department wait times.
“They’ve had access issues. To go to the emergency room and wait hours and hours for health care, it’s not fun,” he said.
The $168 million acute-care facility, at 1050 W. Galleria Drive, is offering emergency care, surgery, maternity care and other medical services.
The hospital, which had held a series of VIP tours, an open house and other events designed to drum up publicity and public support, broke ground in October 2014 after two years of planning. It is the Valley Health System’s sixth facility in the Las Vegas Valley.
“We went through the blueprints and the design and the construction and the hiring, and now, almost four years later, the dream has become a reality,” Kaufman said.
The 130-bed facility is roughly four miles from the nearest acute-care hospital, Dignity Health-St. Rose Dominican’s Rose de Lima Campus. It is the first Valley Health System hospital in Henderson and anchors what is eventually expected to become a $1.2 billion health and wellness complex known as Union Village.
A medical office building tucked behind the hospital is scheduled to open around January. An outpatient surgery center is expected to open in that building next summer, with a wound-care center to follow by the end of 2017.
The hospital also is looking to the future.
Though it already has hired roughly 500 staffers, the hospital is still hiring for nurses and other employees. It’s also keeping a close eye on its occupancy and plans to expand the number of beds or certain departments as necessary.
“We won’t really form an identity with highly specialized-type services until we get open and figure out what the community need is here,” Kaufman said.
The Valley Health System also operates Centennial Hills, Desert Springs, Spring Valley, Summerlin and Valley hospitals in Southern Nevada.
Contact Pashtana Usufzy at pusufzy@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-4563. Follow @pashtana_u on Twitter.
