Dooley still eyeing partnership for nursing center

The critical shortage of qualified nurses the Rhode Island health care industry has been bracing for was delayed by the recession – which temporarily caused people to put off their retirements – but it did not go away.
With the economy showing signs of life and retirements back to normal levels, hospital and nurses groups say the need for the state’s primary public college and university to train more nurses is now greater than ever. So medical and political leaders backing a long-planned joint University of Rhode Island-Rhode Island College advanced nursing center in Providence’s Knowledge District are approaching the issue with a renewed urgency and hope this is the year the project gets off the ground.
But figuring out how to pay for the proposed $60 million advanced nursing center, plus around $5 million for renovations to the existing nursing facilities on each campus, remains a subject of vigorous debate.
Gov. Lincoln D. Chafee this winter proposed borrowing the $65 million needed to cover the project in his fiscal 2013 budget, which is now being reviewed by the General Assembly.
While supporters of the advanced nursing center would welcome the funding, having the state foot the entire bill for the center would mean abandoning a public-private partnership scenario that gained traction last year.
“We are very pleased by the fact that the governor provided the potential for general-obligation bonds for construction and improvements at both campuses – that’s a very positive step,” said URI President David Dooley in a recent phone interview. “But we are still very interested in exploring over the next several weeks the opportunity to do this through a partnership.”
The idea of hiring a private developer to build the new nursing center for the schools, either on publicly or privately owned land, was one of four scenarios examined in a nursing center feasibility study released last spring. The other options were for the state to build the facility itself on publicly owned former Interstate 195 land and for two separate facilities to be constructed on the URI and RIC campuses.
Under each scenario, the two nursing colleges would remain independent of each other and use the new building in Providence for advanced training. With a new Providence facility, the two schools estimate being able to increase total undergraduate enrollment from 1,161 students in 2010 to 1,745 by 2019, and graduate enrollment from 131 students in 2010 to 399 in 2019. The feasibility study found that involving a private developer in construction of a straight nursing school would be more expensive, around $24.6 million over the course of a 25-year lease with an option to buy, than having the state build a similar facility on public land.
But the study did not look at the possibility that, using the nursing schools as anchor tenants, the private developer could build a larger project that would attract other research-based occupants interested in the developing Knowledge District.
The public-private partnership “is still a very, very valuable option to be pursued, because it provides the opportunity to scale-up and increases the potential economic impact for Rhode Island, especially the sciences,” Dooley said. “I think the potential of the public-private partnership is for a much larger project.”
Dooley said he expected to talk to the governor and leaders in the General Assembly about the advanced nursing center in the next several weeks, including whether a partnership with a developer could work.
Chafee spokeswoman Christine Hunsinger said the governor remains “open to the concept of a public/private partnership.”
Bringing more than just the nursing school to the table could be important if the schools want to use a piece of the former I-195 land, which is now controlled by an independent commission with job creation and economic revitalization as its primary goals.
With Johnson & Wales University already laying claim to two parcels outside the I-195 Commission purview and Brown University interested in others, it is unclear how attractive a stand-alone public nursing school would be to commissioners.
I-195 District Commission Chairman Colin Kane told Providence Business News he supports the new nursing-school plan and is glad higher education is as interested in the area as it is, but noted that the commission is focused on more than growing the city’s academic footprint. “If the partnership could deliver more than the nursing school: maybe a research incubator, housing or retail, so the private developer would be in the position to do more than single purpose; in that case there might be a net benefit,” Kane said. “That makes sense to me more than a stand-alone.”
While concluding that using I-195 land would be the least expensive way to build a nursing center, because it is already state controlled, the feasibility study looked at several private Knowledge District sites, including the Dynamo House, the former Narragansett Electric power station on Dyer Street.
Regardless of whether a developer is involved or not, winning the support needed to get the project funded is not a certainty.
House Speaker Gordon Fox has yet to take a position on the project.
“The project itself and the funding mechanism that could be used for it both need to be thoroughly scrutinized,” Fox said in a statement. “That will occur when the House Finance Committee holds a public hearing in March on the governor’s bond proposal. I look forward to reviewing the testimony that will occur at that time.”
Meanwhile, supporters of the project say failing to bolster the nursing schools would miss an opportunity to improve health care and the economy.
“Rhode Island and Providence need a project of this type and size to accomplish what we want in the Knowledge District,” Dooley said “The time is right for economic stimulus in downtown Providence. I think there is a sense of urgency around that.”
Supporters also worry that “the recession may eventually make the nursing shortage worse,” said Brandon Melton, senior vice president for human resources at Lifespan, which employs 3,500 nurses at its five hospitals in the state.
“More nurses might retire in a shorter period of time, and when the baby boomers leave the workforce, they will come back to us as customers flooding home health care, hospice and hospitals,” he said.
“The idea of colocating the two public nursing colleges that turn out the largest number of nurses near our hospitals is very important to us,” Melton said. “We believe it will not only improve students’ experience, but we think it will help improve patient care.” •

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