Central Ohio’s largest orthopedic practice keeps getting bigger as Cardinal Orthopaedic Institute looks to add services and surgeons at a consolidated office in Westerville.
Now at 29 board-certified surgeons, the practice plans to open a 20,000-square-foot office in January at Altair Professional Village on Cleveland Avenue.
“We’re going to continue to expand as it makes sense to do so and as patient demand dictates,” CEO Dale Ingram said. With an aging population that wants to stay active, he said, “Growth is a byproduct of what we do.”
The $4 million project includes $2 million to buy a vacant building from Dublin-based DBS Development Co. LLC. The offices have sat unfilled since being built on speculation two years ago, Ingram said, so the purchase was at a significant discount.
Start to finish
Mount Carmel St. Ann’s Hospital sits two miles to the south on Cleveland Avenue, which is turning into a medical corridor instead of the mainly hotels, offices and stores first envisioned by developers. Cardinal Orthopaedic’s new home is next to a reproductive practice, and a Mount Carmel urgent-care center sits across a soybean field. Down the block is the growing outpatient campus of Nationwide Children’s Hospital, which is building its second pediatric sports medicine clinic. OhioHealth Corp.’s Westerville Medical Campus is about a mile away on Polaris Parkway. Both OhioHealth and St. Ann’s are expanding.
Cardinal Orthopaedic’s plan comes a year after it acquired two practices in Westerville and started looking to house them under a single roof. It also intends to stop seeing patients part-time at leased offices at OhioHealth’s Westerville campus. The practice will add MRI and physical and occupational hand therapy in Westerville, creating about nine jobs, and more of the practice’s specialists will be able to rotate to the site. There’s also room to rent space to a complementary practice such as rheumatology or sports medicine.
The goal is to draw patients from the northern suburbs with a one-stop shop.
“Our goal is musculoskeletal care, start to finish,” said President Dr. Joel Politi.
Trading three leases for ownership about breaks even on operating costs, Ingram said. The practice did not seek public incentives, but the building has a 12-year, 65 percent property tax abatement.
‘Quantum leap’
Cardinal Orthopaedic surgeons practice predominantly within Mount Carmel Health System. The group opened its flagship office across from Mount Carmel East Hospital in 2009. It also has a full-time office in Hilliard and sees patients one day a week in Powell, Sunbury, Grove City and at Mount Carmel’s Diley Ridge outpatient campus in Canal Winchester.
“Since we’ve opened our large facility on the east side,” Ingram said, “the level of communication between the therapists and physicians when they’re in the same practice, sharing the same medical record – it’s quantum leaps above relying on outside therapists.”
Dr. Christopher Holzaepfel, among the four Westerville surgeons who joined the practice last year, said working with a larger group already has brought him new patients.
“This building will continue to improve that,” he said.
Dr. Daniel Quinn, a hand surgeon who starts in September, will spend half his time in Westerville. The other new surgeon, Dr. Ty Fowler, will be based at Hilliard and heads the trauma section at Mount Carmel West Hospital.
Lewis Center-based Hplex Solutions Inc., which developed the east-side headquarters, is the construction manager, with design by Andrews Architects Inc. in Dublin.
614-220-5458 | cghose@bizjournals.com
Carrie Ghose covers health care and medicine, higher education, technology and
business services for Business First.