Mount Carmel Health System plans to start demolishing Mount Carmel West hospital in Franklinton next November.
Mount Carmel is transitioning away from Franklinton and toward Grove City, where an inpatient facility will hold 210 beds. That’s 40 beds fewer than Mount Carmel West has at present.
Mount Carmel West president Sean McKibben says the change will allow Mount Carmel to expand services further south, where they're most needed.
“Almost 50 percent of our patients come from the southwest quadrant closer to Grove City,” McKibben says. “So it was an opportunity for us to get closer to our patients.”
According to McKibben, only 3 percent of patients come from the surrounding neighborhood right now.
“We’ve identified a number of buildings that will come down as part of the transformation and revitalization efforts on the Mount Carmel West campus,” McKibben says.
Such efforts could include a development site for affordable housing or green space for an urban farm. The hospital system will still offer some outpatient care services in Franklinton.
The project will cost $46 million and also includes the expansion of Mount Carmel's Healthy Living Center and College of Nursing.
The demolition of the eight-story hospital building should wrap up by the spring or summer of 2019, according to McKibben.
An earlier version of this story misspelled "McKibben."
