Excela Health is expanding in Fayette County while continuing to review a proposed merger with Butler County’s biggest medical provider.
Excela Health broke ground Friday on a $14 million outpatient clinic on Vanderbilt Road in Connellsville, expanding the Westmoreland County-based health system’s reach as merger negotiations continue with Butler Health System, a two-hospital system based in Butler. Completion of the 30,000-square-foot outpatient center, which is expected by fall 2023, was $2 million higher than when the project was unveiled in November.
Connellsville Councilman Tom Karpiak said the development, located on a one-time coal yard, which had been vacant land for 20 years, signals modern medicine’s recognition of a small town that’s been struggling to get its footing.
“It shows we’re viable and somebody cares,” Mr. Karpiak said at the groundbreaking.
The town’s population peaked in 1920 at 13,800 at the height of a coal and coke boom, before sharply declining to 6,900 today with a poverty rate of 18%, higher than the state average of 12.1%, according to the U.S. Census.
Excela COO Jeffrey A. Tiesi said the clinic demonstrated the health system’s “commitment to Connellsville with routine or advanced care.”
Excela Square at Connellsville will create 92 jobs, not including the 80 to 100 construction workers who will be needed, he said. The building will have 18,000-square-feet for medical offices — primary care, women’s health, heart and lung care and other services — and another 12,000 square feet of reserve capacity for future growth.
The Connellsville project was announced last fall, seven months before Excela and Butler Health System said they were pursuing a merger. Those discussions were continuing, Excela spokesman Tom Chakurda said, with a final deal anticipated in January pending regulatory approval.
“Merger talks are progressing as planned,” Mr. Chakurda said in a prepared statement. “Both boards continue to review due diligence and a final agreement.”
The tie up will create a five-hospital system, the third largest health care provider in Western Pennsylvania behind UPMC and Highmark’s Allegheny Health Network with 40 and 14 hospitals respectively.
Medical office construction and merger talks come at a difficult time for health systems, according to a new report by Chicago-based consultant Kaufman, Hall and Associates LLC. The current year was shaping up to be the most difficult for hospitals since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, with workforce issues leading the difficulties.
“There simply are not enough candidates available to fill empty positions, with particularly acute problems in nursing,” the report concluded.
At the same time, Connellsville has gotten on the radar of other health care providers, which have moved into the area.
In recent years, DuBois-based Penn Highlands Healthcare acquired a 61-bed hospital a few miles from where Excela Square at Connellsville will be built and Morgantown-based WVU Medicine, which operates a hospital in Uniontown, a 15-minute drive away, has been aggressively marketing its primary care doctors on electronic billboards in and near Connellsville.
Kris B. Mamula: kmamula@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1699
First Published: October 24, 2022, 3:44 p.m.
