New St. Luke’s surgery hospital planned west of downtown Boise

St. Luke’s Health System is looking for city approval to build a 230,000-square-foot hospital just west of Downtown Boise.

But it won’t be a typical hospital with a walk-in emergency room, many hospital beds and a full menu of services. Instead, it will be focused on orthopedic care.

Surgery suites and inpatient beds are routinely filled to capacity at the flagship St. Luke’s hospital in the Downtown core, said St. Luke’s spokeswoman Anita Kissée. The new facility would relieve some of that pressure.

St. Luke’s hasn’t made any final decisions but expects the facility would have outpatient clinic space, short-stay inpatient beds and medical imaging and surgical services.

Kissée likened it to the new Children’s Pavilion under construction on the main Downtown Boise campus. Having the services all in one place will make the orthopedic process more efficient and collaborative, she said.

“The new facility is anticipation of the continued transition of care that St. Luke’s is undertaking — our move from traditional hospital environments to those that better reflect the advances and evolution of modern care in settings that are more convenient and lower-cost for our patients,” she said.

The health system filed its paperwork to the city Aug. 24. The facility would span the blocks from Fairview Avenue to the Connector, and from 25th Street to 27th Street.

St. Luke’s has owned the lot — one of the few remaining large undeveloped lots in the Downtown area — for years.

The health system currently has a much smaller orthopedic surgery center and orthopedic clinics near Americana Boulevard and River Street. They surround the proposed site of a new baseball and soccer stadium. The health system owned that 11-acre lot and was in talks earlier this summer to sell it to stadium developers.

The permit application was first reported by BoiseDev.com.

This story was originally published August 29, 2017 at 6:34 PM with the headline "New St. Luke’s surgery hospital planned west of downtown Boise."