After court members voted unanimously to approve the bond issuance, JPR President and CEO Dr. Karen Duncan laid out why the bond package is important to JPS Health Network’s commitment of providing health care at a time when construction costs have escalated.
“A blue-ribbon committee outlined the health care needs of the community, and, at the time, it was thought that they would cost about $1.2 billion to realize the work,” Duncan said. “Due to COVID[-19], starting that work was actually delayed and revisited over the past year and a half. During that time, we looked at escalating costs that were coming through. We laid out a master facilities plan and looked at the monies that we had and began to prioritize that.”
The $450 million bond outlay will be used to pay for a list of prioritized projects that were approved by Tarrant County voters in the November 2018 election.
These projects include a new psychiatric emergency center and the Medical Home Southwest Tarrant building, which will be a new primary care clinic. Groundbreaking ceremonies were held for these two facilities on Oct. 26 and Dec. 7, respectively. Construction projects that have also been prioritized include a new medical office building on campus that will expand the ambulatory surgery and specialty access as well as a central utility plant. Prioritized renovations include extensions to the existing emergency room.
Other projects include the Magnolia parking garage, new hospital towers and west campus demolition. The entirety of the project will cost roughly $1.5 billion, which includes additional excess operating cash of about $600 million invested by JPS, according to www.yestojps.org.
The JPS Bond Program started in February 2017 when the commissioners court established a blue-ribbon committee of Tarrant County citizens to review current and future needs of the JPS Health Network. The committee consisted of 12 members appointed by the court. Its purpose was to analyze current and prospective local, state and national health care delivery trends and give a comprehensive evaluation of JPS facilities as they relate to current and future delivery of health care in Tarrant County for the next 30 years.
Duncan said these projects had various completion times between two and eight years. She also stated that money for these projects is separate from the funding needed to serve their patients on a daily basis.
“We continue to assess the needs of the county," she said. "We do understand that there will be a need across Tarrant County in all precincts for additional health care within those precincts. And so we will continue to assess what we have and we will continue to determine what those services are. And we will continue to look for and provide monies to provide that care that will be needed."
JPS Health Network is named after John Peter Smith (1831-1901), a six-term mayor of Fort Worth. Considered to be "the Father of Fort Worth," he was instrumental in moving the county seat to Fort Worth from Birdville and donated much of his time and land to the expansion of Fort Worth, according to the Texas State Historical Association.
