Cullman Regional CEO talks recent expansions, future growth

Published 4:45 am Saturday, October 19, 2019

While other hospitals around Alabama are closing or seeing slowed growth, Cullman Regional continues to grow.

During the Cullman Area Chamber of Commerce’s monthly Community Luncheon Friday afternoon, Cullman Regional CEO James Clements spoke about the hospital’s recent expansions and some of its plans for the future.

“We have a fairly simple philosophy at Cullman Regional,” he said. “What we want to do is bring the resources here to Cullman so people can stay home for their healthcare.”

To help accomplish that goal, the hospital has completed construction on several expansions in recent months, including the addition of a new floor to the hospital that added 30 new inpatient beds and the building of an urgent care and imaging center on the hospital campus, he said.

Other recent additions include an Automated Breast Ultrasound System and 3-D mammography to expand women’s health programs, and technological upgrades like the da Vinci surgical robot and Mako robotic-arm assisted surgery that make smaller incisions and have faster recovery times, Clements said.

With the expansion of services has also come new doctors, and there are more on the way as the hospital continues to grow, Clements said.

“It is an ongoing pipeline of new physicians and new technology coming to Cullman,” he said. 

After all of that growth over the last couple of years, Cullman Regional is not planning to slow down.

In June, the hospital announced a $30 million expansion that will help lighten the load on some of the hospital’s busiest areas.

“The areas of the hospital that this project will address are areas that are currently very congested,” he said. 

The expansion will increase the capacity of the Critical Care Unit by 50 percent, increase the capacity of the Emergency Department by 50 percent and add more private rooms to reduce the usage of semi-private rooms throughout the facility. 

The addition will also add an Outpatient Behavioral Health Program, and the hospital has asked the state for permission to begin treating people for outpatient behavioral issues and employed a psychiatrist for that purpose, Clements said.

“That has been area that this community is focused on as well as the hospital in creating a way to deal with the behavioral issues that we have in our community,” he said. 

Cullman Regional’s recent expansions totaled around $40 million in capital investment, and combing that with the new $30 million expansion that is in the works means that the hospital has committed more than $70 million to improve local healthcare over the last 36 months, Clements said. 

With that investment, the hospital has created 203 jobs over the last 24 months and is planning for at least 100 new jobs when the new expansion is completed, he said.