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Health Care Team Aims to Provide F.H. With Needed Service: Partners Want to Convert Buildings to Medical Facility

Posted on: Tuesday, 14 February 2006, 12:00 CST

By Shanna Hogan, The Tribune, Mesa, Ariz.

Feb. 14--A team of health care providers is planning to turn the old Fountain Hills Town Hall into a full-service medical campus, a project that would enhance the town's relatively scarce medical services.

Buildings on 6-acres along Palisades Boulevard have been vacant since July, when the town's operations moved to a new facility on Avenue of the Fountains.

Three health care providers who have practices in the northeast Valley want to transform the three buildings on the site into the town's first complete outpatient medical campus by next winter.

"As the city grows so does the need for medical care," said Dr. Matt Hummel. "Patients are tired of having to drive into Scottsdale for medical services."

Hummel, a primary care physician in Fountain Hills, is partnering with Tim Spooner, a physical therapist with offices in Fountain Hills and Dr. Rod Owen, a radiologist who works for Scottsdale Medical Imaging in Scottsdale, to buy the property. The three have formed a medical company called Fountain Hills Medical Campus LLC.

The buyers and owner Lou Pappan have settled on a $5.5 million price and are in a 45-day due diligence period. It will also cost up to $2 million to prepare the buildings for renovation, which the medical team hopes to start as soon as July, Owen said. All three buildings need to be completely gutted.

The facility will draw practitioners from every specialty and eventually accommodate 10 to 15 doctors, he said.

Although 24-hour services are not currently in the plans, Owen said that adding an urgent care center in the future has not been ruled out.

"We definitely have a need for more medical care facilities in Fountain Hills," said Megan Griego, economic development specialist for Fountain Hills.

Griego said research she conducted in September showed there were six licensed family physicians in Fountain Hills, which has a population of 25,251 -- a ratio of 4,209 to 1.

That's a big reason Fountain Hills residents typically travel to Scottsdale or Mesa for many health care services, she said.

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Copyright (c) 2006, The Tribune, Mesa, Ariz.

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

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Source: The Tribune

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