Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, June 1, 1995                   TAG: 9506010068
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: B-8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: BRIAN KELLEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RADFORD                                LENGTH: Medium

$60 MILLION HEALTH CENTER ANNOUNCED

Radford Community Hospital officials said they will file with regulators this month for state approval of a new hospital by 1998 at the southeast side of the Interstate 81/Virginia 177 intersection in Montgomery County. Regulatory review is expected to take a year.

The site is approximately five miles south of the 52-year-old hospital in Radford. It is being termed a "health center" to distinguish it from the older generation of hospitals, which focused on inpatient care. The new wave will put a greater focus on outpatient care and prevention.

Radford Community, which employs about 700 people, affiliated with Carilion in 1988, in part because it believed financing would be less expensive as part of a large hospital system, said Lester Lamb, Radford's president and chief executive.

But last month, executives with Carilion, the Roanoke Valley's largest private employer, said they plan to cut annual expenses by 9 percent, or $36 million, over the next two years in anticipation of a similar drop in revenue. Annual expenses could drop as much as $134 million over the next eight years in response to the changing health-care industry.

Both Lamb and Carilion President Tom Robertson said building the new hospital fits in with the company's operating changes. Lamb said Radford Community "got a jump" on the Carilion effort by shifting its patient-care philosophy and reducing staff size through attrition beginning in 1992.

Robertson said the new hospital probably will have fewer than 100 beds, compared with 175 in the old hospital.

"What we are accomplishing here is preparing for health care the way it's going to be delivered in the future," Robertson said.