HCA announces schedule for new NOVA hospital.

StoneSprings Hospital Center will break ground this fall and is on schedule for a December 2015 opening, HCA Virginia Health System officials announced Thursday.

“The countdown for opening Northern Virginia’s next hospital has officially begun,” Margaret Lewis, senior executive of HCA Virginia Health System and president of HCA’s Capital Division, said in a statement.

The hospital’s name has been changed from StoneSpring Medical Center to coincide with the physical street address, Stone Springs Boulevard, and the naming structure used by HCA Virginia Health System in Northern Virginia.

The 124-bed, $147 million, 230,000-square-foot facility will provide inpatient, outpatient, surgical, and diagnostic services. HCA said it would be equipped with an MRI and CT, 14 emergency room bays, seven operating rooms, and a cardiac catheterization lab.

“StoneSprings Hospital Center will not only improve access to care for patients, it will also become an important part of Loudoun County’s economy and community,” said John Deardorff, CEO of Reston Hospital and market lead for HCA Northern Virginia.

HCA Virginia Health System was awarded a certificate of public need in May 2005 to build a hospital in the Broadlands community of Loudoun County. In 2009, after failing to receive county zoning approval, the project was moved to a 51-acre site in Dulles at the intersection of Gum Spring Road (Route 659) and John Mosby Highway (Route 50).

The plans for the original Broadlands hospital included the transfer of 40 psychiatric beds from Dominion Hospital, a mental health facility in nearby Falls Church. At StoneSprings Hospital Center, HCA Virginia Health System plans to provide only outpatient mental health services, and it will petition the state to keep 32 of the 40 beds at Dominion Hospital, maintaining the hospital’s capacity at 100 beds.

“Dominion Hospital will remain our inpatient mental health facility for Northern Virginia,” said Cindy Meyer, vice president of behavioral health services for HCA Virginia Health System.

Next month will mark the opening of StoneSpring Emergency Center (SEC) on the site where the hospital will eventually be built. HCA plans to staff the 9,600-square-foot facility 24/7. It will remain operational until StoneSprings Hospital Center opens.

HCA projects that the new hospital will have more than 3,200 admissions and nearly 20,000 emergency room visits in its first year, with a workforce of more than 500 employees. It will pay $2.1 million in local property taxes.

Plans are underway to build a 60,000-square-foot medical office building on the StoneSprings campus for use by physicians and other medical providers.