INTERNAL MEDICINE DRIVING FORCE BEHIND BUILDING

A Cape Girardeau doctors' group is the driving force behind a planned medical office building on the St. Francis Medical Center campus, the group's administrator said Wednesday.

"Basically, we are the driving force behind this because we don't have enough space; because we need a new building," said Steve Telford, administrator of the Internal Medicine Group.

The proposed project has drawn strong criticism from the Southeast Missouri Business Group on Health and the Cape Girardeau County Area Medical Society.

A majority of doctors who attended the society's meeting Monday night voiced opposition to construction of a medical office building on the campus of either Cape Girardeau hospital.

Officials at both hospitals declined comment Wednesday.

Internal Medicine is Cape's largest medical group, with 17 doctors and 68 support personnel, spread out in two buildings separated by several blocks. Another four doctors are expected to join the group within the next four months, Telford said.

"We have gotten so big we have had to move pediatrics over to a building on Mount Auburn Road (next to St. Francis hospital)," he said. "We are busting at the seams." Internal Medicine's main office is in Doctors' Park.

"Basically, we had three options: Build on the Southeast (Missouri Hospital) site, build on the St. Francis site, or build on a neutral site," said Telford.

Internal Medicine explored all three options, and settled on the St. Francis site.

Telford said the group rejected the Southeast site because of its hilly terrain. He said Internal Medicine wanted a site that "wouldn't be on the side of a cliff and where parking wouldn't be a problem."

The medical facility likely would be owned by the doctors whose offices are in the building, with St. Francis leasing or selling them land for the building, he said.

The building would be about 80,000 square feet in size and house not just Internal Medicine, but other doctors' offices, said Telford.

He added that Southeast Hospital officials would have welcomed having a medical office building on their campus, just as St. Francis is doing now.

But the Business Group on Health argues that constructing a medical office building on either the St. Francis or Southeast Missouri Hospital campus would lead to a building war between the two hospitals and result in costly duplication of services. That, in turn, would mean higher costs for consumers, business group officials say.

Medical society officials worry that such a move could result in doctors becoming aligned with one hospital or another, creating divisions within the medical community.

Seventy physicians attended a meeting of the medical society Monday night, where the issue was discussed.

Dr. Kent Griffith, medical society president, said a majority of the doctors approved a motion stating that the society "does not condone or support the construction of medical office facilities at either St. Francis or Southeast Missouri Hospital."

Griffith said the measure passed by a vote of 56 to 12. He said he planned to send a letter to officials at both hospitals, explaining the society's action.

"The membership felt that the doctors needed to make a statement regarding their position, mainly to let the hospital administrators know how a majority of the physicians felt on that issue," he said.

"We think it (the medical building proposal) is counter-productive to hospital collaboration and is not in the best interests of the group," said Griffith, who works in a family medical group.

"I think the general feeling is that having office facilities on campus would tend to align doctors with one hospital or another and tend to lead toward a splitting of the hospital staffs," said Griffith.

The medical society has about 140 members, but only about 70 doctors generally are in attendance at any one meeting, Griffith said.

Telford said that Monday night's vote reflected the wishes of less than 40 percent of the society's members. "It doesn't mean anything to us," said Telford.