Central Peninsula Hospital in Arkansas is buying the independently owned Surgery Center of Kenai for nearly $10 million, KDLL reports.
The purchase of the two-operating room facility will, in turn, expand the hospital’s capacity and allow it to address a backlog of surgeries, said hospital CEO Shaun Keef.
“We’ve had several surgeons over the last year who have requested additional block time in our ORs because they had patients that need procedures that live in our area,” he told the Kenai Peninsula Borough Assembly at a Tuesday finance committee meeting. “And we’re unable, at this point, to get them any more block time, due to the fact we practically just ran out of block time. The ORs are full.”
The Surgery Center of Kenai opened in 2014 and is the only for-profit center of its kind on the peninsula.
It does outpatient surgeries and has historically been a competitor with the borough-owned hospital. In 2014, the hospital declined to accept a transfer agreement with the Surgery Center making it so the center could not take Medicare or Medicaid patients. Read more.
