A $7 million construction permit secured last month by Heartland Regional Medical Center is the next step toward the hospital’s plans to provide long-term acute care.

This long-term acute-care facility will be a 41-bed hospital separate from the rest of the medical center but located on the center’s second floor. It will create a need to finish the fourth floor of Heartland’s east wing to have a place for the second-floor beds that will be displaced.

Heartland also plans to finish the fifth floor of that wing, and it’s this work — rather than any new construction — that will be funded by the $7 million, said Marcy George, Heartland’s media and communications coordinator.

The estimated completion date for the long-term acute-care hospital is January 2009.

“It will provide specialized care for the acutely ill patient who no longer requires the intensive care unit,” said Mrs. George, “but still needs 24-hour care with constant monitoring.”

Patients of this hospital will be those who have multi–system complications or failures and require hospitalizations of 25 days or more, she added, but the hospital will not interfere with their transfer to a skilled nursing facility when they are ready for the convalescent phase of their care.

The estimated completion date for the east wing’s fourth floor is December 2008, and the estimated completion date for the fifth floor — which will include an expansion and relocation of Heartland’s wellness and bio-med centers — is July 2008.

Erin Wisdom can be reached at

ewisdom@npgco.com.