TriState fundraising for expansions and updates to its surgical center

TriState Health is aiming to raise roughly $5 million in community donations to help fund the first phase of an expansion and update of its Surgical Center.

D’Lynn Ottmar, chief development officer at the TriState Health Foundation, said TriState is planning two phases to the expansion. Total costs for the first phase of the expansion are estimated to be around $30 million, Ottmar said.

The first phase would include an infrastructure upgrade and expanding the hospital’s sterile processing unit.

“That (sterile processing unit) area is small,” she said. “As technology grows and expands, (and) we get new pieces of equipment, we need to have more space to be able to accommodate in cleaning and sterilizing those pieces of equipment.”

The foundation’s board hopes to receive roughly $8 million in state and federal money for the first phase of the process, she said, and anywhere from $6 million to $8 million for the second part of the process.

The second phase, Ottmar said, will involve the expansion of the operating room as well as post- and pre-operation rooms for patients.

“The first phase really gets us what we need,” she said. “The second phase kind of gets us what we want.”

Those Phase 1 expansions are necessary to accommodate increases in surgical services, which have increased by about 50% since 2019, Ottmar said.

The hospital’s patient base is also aging, increasing the need for certain types of care. According to a request the hospital made for federal funds last year, TriState’s primary patient population resides within Asotin, Garfield and Nez Perce counties, and all three counties share similar demographics.

That same request noted that the three counties had a combined average of 25% senior residents, and that the number of seniors outpaces the number of K-12 students in the area. It also noted that the next cohort senior residents account for roughly 21% of the total population.

“It’s all about really helping the community,” Ottmar said. “Within the next five, 10 years, 39% of our population is going to be over the age of 65.”

Some infrastructure upgrades are already underway with existing funding, Ottmar said, such as $1 million the hospital received from the state this year.

“We’re only spending the money as we get it,” she said.

Ottmar said the exact extent of the upgrades will be dependent on how much the hospital is able to raise through a combination of government grants and community support.

“We just recently built a new inpatient dietary wing. We are, you know, max for our debt to capacity ratio. So we absolutely need to get state and federal funding to help support this, and also community support, for us to move forward.”

Sun may be contacted at rsun@lmtribune.com or on Twitter at @Rachel_M_Sun. This report is made in partnership with Northwest Public Broadcasting, the Lewiston Tribune and the Moscow-Pullman Daily News.