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Weekly UpdatesNEA Baptist Memorial Hospital in Jonesboro recently received the rezoning approval it needed to move forward with its plans for the construction of a hospital.
NEA Baptist had bought three plots of land totaling 76 acres on Highway 49 North in Jonesboro, but some of the property had been zoned residential, said Paul Betz, administrator and CEO of the hospital.
The planning commission approved the hospital's rezoning request, as did the Jonesboro City Council.
"We have a lot of work ahead of us," Betz said. "We need to do more with the Planning Commission on actual grading and leveling of the property."
A group of doctors also is planning to build a medical office building at the site, Betz said.
"We just don't have enough space to take care of all our patients," Betz said of NEA's current 100-bed hospital.
Several of the details, including the size of the new hospital and when construction would start, still are being worked out. Betz said he hopes construction starts in 2010.
He said he wasn't sure what would happen to the 100-bed NEA Baptist Memorial once the new one is built.
In November 2007, Baptist Memorial Health Care Corp. of Memphis partnered with the Northeast Arkansas Clinic to buy out Community Health Systems Inc. of Franklin, Tenn. Baptist bought 51 percent of the hospital from Community Health, which had owned 60 percent of the facility. Northeast Arkansas Clinic bought Community Health's remaining 9 percent, giving the NEA Clinic 49 percent ownership in the hospital. The NEA Clinic and Baptist agreed to govern the hospital on equal terms.
The hospital reported a net income of $1.5 million on patient revenue of $213 million for its fiscal year that ended in May 2007, the most recent year available.
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