The Wyoming Medical Center's dominance in regional health care is about to be challenged by Chicago and Dallas companies.

The Chicago-based National Surgical Hospitals Inc. is expected to break ground for a 45-bed hospital in the McMurry Business Park by the end of the year, Business Park project manager Dan Guerttman said Thursday.

The new hospital, scheduled for completion by mid-2008, would pose a serious competitive challenge to the nonprofit Wyoming Medical Center Inc., which leases Natrona County's hospital assets in exchange for providing indigent and prisoner care.

That impending competition is among the reasons why the Wyoming Medical Center needs to do a better job in collecting money from people who willingly don't carry insurance or refuse to pay, Wyoming Medical Center Board of Directors Chairman Mike Reid said Thursday.

"We're basically no different than any other business, except that we've had a monopoly, and now we're not going to have one," Reid said.

Reid and other WMC officials spoke at the monthly meeting of the Memorial Hospital of Natrona County board of trustees. The board of trustees oversees the lease of the county's hospital assets by the nonprofit WMC.

The McMurry Business Park, Guerttman said, is under contract with the Dallas-based real estate firm Cirrus, which will own the land where National Surgical Hospitals Inc. plans to break ground by the end of the year.

Dennis Solheim, chief development officer for National Surgical Hospitals, was out of the office Thursday and could not be reached for comment.

The new hospital would accept indigent patients, Guerttman added.

However, Wyoming Medical Center officials on Thursday again expressed concern that a for-profit hospital would take mostly insured patients.

If more commercially insured patients go to the for-profit hospital, the WMC would shoulder the burden of having fewer insured patients to make up the difference with the higher proportion of indigent and nonpaying patients.

That drop in revenue would affect the hospital's business including recruiting nurses and doctors, Reid said.

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Reporter Tom Morton can be reached at (307) 266-0592, or at Tom.Morton@casperstartribune.net.

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