A group that includes area business and community leaders has been meeting for about eight months about the possibility of creating a regional medical and research center off of Highway 191 and FM 1788 in Midland County that contemplates relocating Medical Center Hospital and Midland Memorial Hospital from both cities and repurposing their current buildings.
Documents show Don Evans, chairman of the Permian Strategic Partnership, met with Grant Billingsley, president and CEO of the Scharbauer Foundation, Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center Chief of Staff Cole Johnson, UT System Executive Vice Chancellor Dr. John Zerwas, Texas Tech Health Sciences Center President Dr. Lori Rice Spearman and the CEO’s of both Midland Memorial and MCH among others.
Others were also involved in a meeting held June 27th at the Wagner Noel Performing Arts Center. A printed copy of a PowerPoint presentation featured at the meeting shows the complex would also house a main street with cafes, shops, a theater district with an outdoor amphitheater and also a hotel conference center. A park would also be part of the complex.
Elected officials from Ector County, the City of Odessa and Medical Center Hospital were reluctant to speak publicly Monday, citing the good work the PSP does and also pending grants from the PSP.
Odessa Chamber of Commerce CEO Renee Earls said she doesn’t know all the details of the plan but said the topic was brought up during a weekend Chamber retreat. She said the chamber needs to pursue a fact-finding mission the further explore the plan.
“We are too large of a community to not have our own hospital and are fortunate to have two,” she said. “And we have seen how well they work together like they did throughout COVID.”
She said the value of Medical Center property downtown and in other parts of Ector County is critical to the local economy, “and we don’t need those buildings to go dark.”
“We are trying to improve downtown,” she, adding that depending on the outcome of such a project “it could be a huge downfall for Odessa and would affect sales tax revenue and employment as MCH is THE second-largest employer in Odessa.”
Elected officials with MCH and the city officials, did note privately that the public should have been in on planning from the beginning.
The copy of the PowerPoint shows that the plan “The Road to 2026” is a framework of partnerships that would include an expansion of the University of Texas Permian Basin campus that would include a health sciences complex with nursing, pre-med, as well as future programs such as occupational, physical and speech therapy, pharmacy and public health. It also details an expansion of the engineering, business, music, applied research and workforce programs.
Individuals with deeper knowledge of the plan privately pointed out that the new facility would have about half the hospital beds that both Midland and Odessa combined currently have. One source said meetings went from, “What can we do to help the medical community?” to, “How can we turn this into a new regional hospital?”
Odessa Regional Medical Center is a private hospital, but both MCH and Midland Memorial are public hospitals funded by both sales tax and property taxes revenues. Some sources on Monday said there is a plan to ask the Legislature for severance tax money to fund the planned healthcare system.
State Rep. Brooks Landgraf said bills cannot be filed until November for the 2023 legislative session. He said he has not been involved with the planning but would say that “anything that has an impact on healthcare for our community needs to have input from the community.”
