What's driving hospital growth in central Ohio?
COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) -- Central Ohio healthcare systems are growing in anticipation of more population growth in the region.
Construction across the area is hard to miss and this includes the construction of new hospitals. All of central Ohio's major hospitals are working on major projects.
"You see a lot of cranes out there, so I can tell you all four hospital systems here in Franklin County are undertaking large construction projects," said Jeff Klingler, president and CEO of the Central Ohio Hospital Council.
The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center's new inpatient hospital is 1.9 million square feet and will have up to 820 beds when completed. Just a bit north, OhioHealth is building a 590,000 square foot women's center by its Riverside Hospital. Mount Carmel is opening a new hospital in Dublin. Nationwide Children's has started working on a new tower which will be right next to the current one.
Watch: What's driving hospital growth in central Ohio?
"When you look at the data, we know this community, the population of central Ohio will grow by about 30% over the next 25 years, that will be about 730,000 new residents here in central Ohio, and our hospitals like other sectors are making plans now for that anticipated growth," Klingler said.
Klingler said the expected population growth is partly due to Intel and other companies also growing in our area. The healthcare expansion isn't just happening to handle more people overall, but also a larger percentage of the population which is older, according to Klingler.
"We know even in the past four years, Franklin County population has grown by 2%, the population of those 65 and older has grown 12% over the past 4 years. We know that's going to escalate over the next 10 to 15, 20 years," Klingler said. "As we know as you get older our health conditions become a little bit more complex."
With all the new hospitals come jobs to operate them. Both Klingler and John Palmer, director of Public Affairs for the Ohio Hospital Association, said staffing is a challenge.
"That's been the top concern in recent years. When hospital CEOs or hospital leaders have been surveyed and polled, workforce, particularly workforce recruitment has been a top concern for hospital leaders," Palmer said.
Klingler described workforce as a challenge. He said the four central Ohio hospital systems currently employ just less than 84,000 people and have 6,500 open positions. The new facilities are anticipated to bring another 6,000-7,000 jobs, according to Klingler. He and Palmer said hospitals are focused on recruitment, including trying to get students interested in the field at younger ages.
"Our hospitals collectively go into high schools, even into middle schools, to educate students on healthcare careers into the future. We work with our local universities and colleges to explain what our future healthcare needs are going to be to make sure they are producing the talent we need," Klingler said. "Building that pipeline is something our hospitals work together on and we hope we can kind of lessen some of those barriers going into the next 10 to 15 years."
Palmer also pointed out this sort of growth is not unique to central Ohio.
"Certainly Columbus is seeing activity around new construction. But we're also seeing other areas around the state that are making those investments as well," he said.
