Photo by Sarah Sole
This summer will mark the beginning of new health opportunities for Pickerington residents.
On June 3, the OhioHealth Pickerington Medical Campus, a $35 million project, will open for patients. The 146,000-square-foot facility will have approximately 100 employees when it opens, and about 75 percent of that number will be new jobs.
The campus, located at 1010 Refugee Rd., will feature a 24/7 Emergency Care Center, outpatient surgery, rehabilitation and sports medicine, imaging, laboratory services, and heart and vascular services. Physicians will include general surgery, heart and vascular, OB/GYN, oncology, orthopedics, primary care, sports medicine, and women’s health. OhioHealth plans to continue adding additional services within the next year, including neurology and breast surgery.
While some existing OhioHealth-affiliated caregivers will move to the new campus, others will remain where they are. Two doctors from the Pickerington Max Sports Center, located at 1797 Hill Rd. N., will move to OhioHealth Pickerington Medical Campus. Three OhioHealth Primary Care physicians on Stonecreek Drive will also move to the new campus. OhioHealth Sleep Services on Clint Drive will stay put, as will the Reynoldsburg OhioHealth Urgent Care center and the OhioHealth Primary Care physicians located at 417 Hill Rd. N.
In the future, the campus will also be home to private physicians.
OhioHealth will also lease 2,000 square feet of its facility to Pickerington Local Schools for $1 per year for the district’s science, technology, engineering and math program (STEM).
The campus has room for growth, says Rob Davies, director of the Pickerington Medical Campus. The site and parking lot occupy approximately 18-20 acres of the 61 total acres OhioHealth owns near the southwest corner of State Rt. 256 and Refugee Road.
“As Pickerington grows, OhioHealth is growing with it,” Davies says.
OhioHealth did extensive research to determine what services would be best for Pickerington residents.
“We were very deliberate,” says Jason Theadore, interim president of OhioHealth Neighborhood Care.
OhioHealth, assisted by outside firms, met with many Pickerington community members and researched what their expectations were for a new OhioHealth campus. The existing OhioHealth physician partners in Pickerington also had valuable insight about for what services their patients were required to look elsewhere. Community leaders, including the Pickerington Local School District and the Mayor’s Office, were involved in the discussions.
Ultimately, the feedback from the various sources was similar, Theadore says. The desire was for Pickerington residents to have access to a wide range of specialties at one community location.
Providing easy and safe access to the OhioHealth campus was paramount for both OhioHealth and the city of Pickerington, Mayor Lee Gray says. To achieve this, the city extended Stonecreek Drive from Rt. 256 to Refugee Road.
With cooperation from the city, the school district and OhioHealth, the city used tax increment financing on the OhioHealth property. With that revenue, Refugee Road will be widened to better accommodate traffic expected from the new campus and the eventual commercial interest.
These changes are a far cry from the Pickerington Gray knew when he first served as mayor in the 1990s. When he was initially elected, the city itself had more than 5,000 residents, Gray says. Now, the city has close to 20,000 people. The service industry grows according to the population. Now Pickerington has two big health care providers in the area – Diley Ridge Medical Center in Violet Township, and now OhioHealth on Refugee Road. While OhioHealth is in the city’s corporate boundaries, Diley Ridge is not.
“They have really stepped up to the plate and have been a great corporate partner,” Gray says of OhioHealth. “It’s just another win for the Pickerington community.”
Sarah Sole is an assistant editor. Feedback welcome at ssole@cityscenemediagroup.com.
