Mercer Health to buy Galleria for $3 million

COLDWATER- Mercer Health officials on Wednesday night announced plans to purchase the Grand Lake Galleria Conference Center in Celina for $3 million.

Board of governors on Wednesday night passed a resolution authorizing Mercer Health executives to secure up to $2.7 million in long-term debt financing to acquire the center where it currently leases office space.

"Certainly, it's been a long time coming, but we are finally ready to move forward with the purchase of the Galleria facility, there in Celina," said hospital chief financial officer Jon Dingledine. "This purchase definitely makes sense for us on many fronts at this time."

When asked by the newspaper, Dingledine said Mercer Health is not ready to disclose its plans for the conference center.

"The facility itself is 60,000 square feet of which we currently occupy a little under half with our offices that we operate out of there today," Dingledine said. "This is in addition to the nearly 40,000 square feet that that was purchased a couple years ago as part of the Big Bear purchase that's connected to the Galleria. Those two facilities combined really provide a space that'll serve us well into the future and allow us to continue to grow in order to meet the needs of the Celina community and our region."

Mercer Health closed on the purchase of the 40,000-square-foot space referenced by Dingledine in Feb. 2020.

Dingledine at the time said the acquisition would give Mercer Health options and flexibility to add or enhance future service lines.

Vice President of Development, Marketing and Communications Mindy Kremer had also said the expansions were a continuation of a long-held vision for quality, locally controlled health care.

In other business, Mercer Health was recently selected by Medicare and Medicaid Services as one of seven hospitals in Ohio to participate in a new alternative payment model.

The program is called Transforming Episode Accountability Model (TEAM). It will launch in January and run for five years.

TEAM is an episode-based, alternative payment model in which selected acute care hospitals will coordinate care for people with traditional Medicare undergoing one of the surgical procedures included in the model and assume responsibility for the cost and the quality of care from surgery through the first 30 days after the beneficiary leaves the hospital, Mercer Health CEO Lisa Klenke wrote in her report.

"We have a whole lot more to learn about the model before January of 2026 when it actually takes effect," she said. "But, it's an initiative that they made mandatory."

Also, board members learned that the hospital's new CT scanner had a successful "go-live" on Oct. 8.

The Siemens Somatom 128-slice scanner allows for higher image quality with enhanced cardiac and neuro perfusion imaging options, Klenke said.

Prior to this, the hospital was using a mobile CT scanner. That scanner is no longer on campus.

The board meets next at 6:30 p.m. Nov. 20 in the Sanderell Room at the hospital.