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Home » ENR Midwest's 2013 Owner of the Year: Mercy Health System
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ENR Midwest's 2013 Owner of the Year: Mercy Health System

Owner of the Year: Mercy Health System
The 261-bed Mercy Hospital Joplin will be completed in early 2015 and include several tornado-resistant features.

Image Courtesy of McCarthy Building Cos.
Owner of the Year: Mercy Health System
Ground broke on Mercy Hospital Joplin just seven months after its predecessor was destroyed.

Photo Courtesy of McCarthy Building Cos.
Owner of the Year: Mercy Health System
An EF-5 tornado packing winds of 200 mph destroyed St. John's Regional Medical Center, prompting Mercy Health System to rebuild.

Photo Courtesy of McCarthy Building Cos.
Owner of the Year: Mercy Health System
Mercy currently occupies a component facility it constructed in less than 9 months. It will vacate the structure, once a full-scale replacement facility is completed.

Photo Courtesy of McCarthy Building Cos.
Owner of the Year: Mercy Health System
Mercy Health System will replace its tornado-ravaged hospital in Joplin, Mo., in about half the time required to design and construct a comparably sized facility.

Photo Courtesy of Sky Foto Inc.
Owner of the Year: Mercy Health System
In the months following the tornado, Mercy constructed several interim facilities, including a tented field hospital.

Photo Courtesy of McCarthy Building Cos.
Owner of the Year: Mercy Health System
Mercy Hospital Joplin topped out in late February, a little more than a year after breaking ground.

Photo Courtesy of McCarthy Building Cos.
Owner of the Year: Mercy Health System
Owner of the Year: Mercy Health System
Owner of the Year: Mercy Health System
Owner of the Year: Mercy Health System
Owner of the Year: Mercy Health System
Owner of the Year: Mercy Health System
Owner of the Year: Mercy Health System
April 1, 2013
John Gregerson
KEYWORDS ENR Midwest Owner of the Year
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In 45 seconds it came and went. Ballast from atop the roof rained down, shattering windows, sending glass shards flying. Wind peeled back the underlying deck. In it rushed, ripping doors from hinges, Sheetrock from studs, IVs from patients' arms. Up it barreled, blowing out ceiling tiles, light fixtures, wiring. On the roof, an air-handler lifted off, then slammed into a back-up generator. The building lost power. Patients on respirators lost their lives.

Then, it was over.

However, that wasn't the end of St. John's Regional Medical Center. On May 23, 2011, a day after the EF-5 tornado struck Joplin, Mo., packing 200-mph winds and claiming 162 lives, Lynn Britton, president of the Sisters of Mercy Health System, indicated he wanted St. John's—or some semblance of the 750,000-sq-ft facility Mercy operated—functioning within a week.

By then, John Farnen, executive director of planning, design and construction with Chesterfield, Mo.-based Mercy was on the ground. The devastation, he says, "was surreal." Two days later, as members of Missouri's Disaster Medical Assistance Team were testing tents to house a makeshift 60-bed field hospital, Stephen Meuschke, project manager with St. Louis-based contractor McCarthy Building Cos., arrived on site—a parking lot.

‘Hook It Up’

"All these mobile units started showing up," recalls Meuschke. "We had two ORs, an MRI, a CT, labs, pharmacies—we never knew what was coming next. Something would arrive and someone would say, 'Hook it up.' Everything was running off generators for two months. I've been here ever since."

Mercy hasn't stopped rebuilding. Its most recent step to renewal involves the construction of a $335-million, 875,000-sq-ft, steel-framed replacement hospital, a facility that broke ground in January 2012, just seven months after the tornado struck.

"From the outset, Mercy made the commitment to fast-track," says Scott Wittkop, McCarthy central division president. "A facility of this size typically requires 18 months of planning. Here, we broke ground after seven."

"As late as November 2011, we hadn't seen a single drawing," adds Meuschke. "When we broke ground, all we had were civil drawings. We didn't even know what the foundation looked like. By the time the foundation was in, we still hadn't seen the exterior skin. So it became a matter of, 'Well, that's what the foundation looks like, so we'll take its dimensions and match the skin to it."

Interior work on the facility, renamed Mercy Hospital Joplin, began in December. If all proceeds as planned, exterior work will be completed in November, the central utility plant in January 2014, with punch list, MEP commissioning and move-in scheduled for early 2015.

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