New Henderson hospital will specialize in cardiac care
A new acute-care hospital in Henderson will specialize in providing cardiac care while adding needed capacity in the growing community, Valley Health System executives said following a ceremonial groundbreaking Wednesday morning.
West Henderson Hospital will open in mid-2024 with 150 beds, 37 emergency room bays, seven surgical suites and specialized cardiac services, the executives said. The facility is designed to expand to 450 beds as the city grows.
“If anything, we learned from the pandemic … we have to have access to high quality health care, and it has to be timely,” said Karla Perez, regional vice president of Universal Health Services Acute Care Division. Pennsylvania-based health care giant UHS owns the Valley Health System.
“We can’t have patients who are waiting hours or days to be seen in an emergency room,” Perez told the Review-Journal. “We have to have more capacity.”
West Henderson Hospital will be the Valley Health System’s seventh acute-care hospital in Southern Nevada and its second in Henderson.
It will have two cardiac catheterization labs, one electrophysiology lab to treat heart rhythm disorders, and the capability for open-heart surgery, said Chris Loftus, CEO of both West Henderson and Desert Springs hospitals.
All Valley Health System hospitals have the capacity for interventional cardiology, meaning they can treat a heart attack by using a catheter to put in stents, Loftus said. However, “if the disease is just way beyond putting stents in, and you have to do a bypass, that’s when you have to do open heart cardiovascular surgery.”
But not all hospitals have the capability to perform open-heart surgery. Valley Health System’s Henderson Hospital does not do these surgeries. Henderson’s only other hospital, St. Rose Dominican, Siena campus, has been performing open-heart procedures for 20 years, representative Gordon Absher said.
Other Southern Nevada hospitals performing open-heart surgery include St. Rose Dominican, San Martin campus, University Medical Center, Sunrise, Sunrise Children’s and MountainView hospitals, representatives said.
Within the Valley Health System, Valley, Summerlin, Spring Mountain and Desert Springs hospitals also have this capability.
‘Repurposing’ Desert Springs Hospital
Desert Springs Hospital, located east of the Strip, has made a name for itself with its cardiac care and its bariatric surgical weight control program. The hospital entered the national spotlight when it treated then-presidential candidate Bernie Sanders after his heart attack on the campaign trail in October 2019.
Both Desert Springs’ open-heart surgery capability and its bariatric program will be shifted to West Henderson Hospital, representatives said.
“And we will be looking to repurpose Desert Springs ultimately, with additional services that they currently don’t provide, such as post-acute types of care,” Perez said. These could include behavioral health, rehabilitation and skilled-nursing services.
“It’s still undetermined as to what that will all be, but we’re certainly in the planning stages right now,” she said.
West Henderson Hospital’s 40-acre medical campus is being built at St. Rose Parkway and Raiders Way, east of Las Vegas Boulevard. Las Vegas-based SR Construction is the general contractor. The last acute-care hospital to be built in Southern Nevada was Henderson Hospital, which opened in 2016.
Henderson Mayor Debra March said the new hospital would be convenient for people living in the West Henderson area, including Sun City Anthem. “Sun City Anthem is an aging community, so it’s important that we have the resources they need,” she said. “And as we heard about all the specialty clinics that they’re going to be having, those are the kinds of things that matter as people age.”
Contact Mary Hynes at mhynes@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0336. Follow @MaryHynes1 on Twitter.
