LV land might go for hospital

The city of Las Vegas is considering donating 4.5 acres downtown worth about $12 million to the Cleveland Clinic to entice the nonprofit academic medical center to build a satellite operation there.

The city would negotiate donating or selling another 7.7 acres worth about $23 million to the clinic for the project, according to a pending agreement between the city and the Cleveland Clinic Foundation.

Actual building space would total about 9 acres because much of the space would be taken up for such infrastructure as roads and sidewalks.

The land is in Symphony Park, a largely undeveloped area of the downtown southeast of the Spaghetti Bowl.

Bill Arent, acting director of the city's business development office, said Monday that a land donation is one of the city's best incentives when courting a sought-after entity such as the Cleveland Clinic and competing with other states that can offer more incentives.

"It's really one of the few tools ... in the toolbox that we have," Arent said. "We have the good tax environment, but we don't have much in the way of state and local incentives."

Giving the clinic a break on land costs doesn't sit well with the head of the local medical society.

Patients at the clinic should receive either free or discounted treatment if the proposed deal is carried out, Dr. Annette Teijeiro, president of the Clark County Medical Society, suggested Monday.

"In that way, this would really benefit the community," she said.

She said she worries that the entrance of the Cleveland Clinic into the local general health care arena "would mean a duplication of services."

Teijeiro's remarks are not surprising, said Dr. Ole Thienhaus, dean of the University of Nevada School of Medicine.

"You have to remember that there is always concern about a dilution of the marketplace" by doctors and hospitals whenever a new medical center is interested in coming to town, Thienhaus said.

They like them, he said, as long as "they're not in their backyard."

Thienhaus said he thought that the clinic could play an important role in the community, including the training of doctors.

Earlier this year, the Cleveland Clinic took over staffing and operation of what is now known as the Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health in Symphony Park. That specialty area did not have many practitioners in the Las Vegas Valley.

Clinic officials have thought a general medical center project could be financially viable in Las Vegas.

Earlier this decade, the clinic planned a $500 million, 195-bed medical center on 25 acres downtown.

A $600,000 study commissioned by the clinic and the city for that project found the academic medical center would become profitable in its second year of operation, but the clinic, which has been rated No. 1 in heart treatment for 15 years by U.S. News & World Report, decided it had to upgrade its heart treatment center in Ohio before expanding.

On Wednesday, the City Council will consider the agreement with the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, which over the next year would study the feasibility of building a general medical care facility in Las Vegas.

Maureen Peckman, chief executive officer of Keep Memory Alive and Cleveland Clinic Nevada, said that at this point it is too early to tell what kind of center would be built.

"We don't even know if we're talking about a facility with hospital beds or not," Peckman said.

"It could be just office towers where diagnostic tests take place or a place where people have appointments with a doctor."

It is doubtful, however, that a Cleveland Clinic facility without a surgical center is what Mayor Oscar Goodman has in mind.

On Monday he said he would like the clinic to find an area in which Las Vegas is underserved and bring that resource to town so that fewer people have to leave the valley to get the care they need.

"Specialties that we're underserved on, that would be my desire," said Goodman, who has fought for years to bring a "world class" medical center to Las Vegas.

He said he would like the Cleveland Clinic operation in Las Vegas to become the "standard-bearer for excellence in the community."

Though Goodman has said there are many fine doctors in Nevada, he has said the perception among many Nevadans is that they must leave the state to get quality care.

Major political and public figures -- including former Govs. Kenny Guinn and Bob Miller, former Las Vegas Mayor Jan Jones and former chancellor of higher education Jim Rogers -- have left Nevada to get medical treatment.

As they have been in the past, local medical professionals are lukewarm, at best, about a new medical center arriving in town.

Ashlee Seymour, a spokeswoman for the Sunrise Healthcare System, said the Cleveland Clinic does good work in the neurosciences, but "we do, too."

She said she couldn't talk about other health care specializations offered by the clinic.

Under the terms of the proposed agreement with the city, Cleveland Clinic would have until Jan. 31 to submit an overall development plan, followed by a more detailed proposal showing building placement, parking requirements and traffic flow by March 31.

The agreement, which states the city will negotiate exclusively with the Cleveland Clinic Foundation over the city-owned parcels, would expire Nov. 29, 2010, unless both parties agreed to extend it.

Contact reporter Paul Harasim at pharasim@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2908.