A worsening economy and changes in health care trends have led Carondelet Health Network to re-evaluate plans to build new hospitals in Sahuarita and Nogales.

Letty Ramirez, chief marketing and planning officer for Carondelet, said the re-evaluation of the hospital plans came about because of a variety of factors.

“The health care trend is for a wide range of outpatient and primary care/specialty medical services, which are more accessible for patients closer to home,” Ramirez said in an e-mail message. “Added to this is the current economic environment has resulted in financial challenges across most industries including construction, real estate, banking and financial services, health care and service industries.”

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The projected construction cost of the hospitals has grown significantly and the cost of raising capital has also increased, Ramirez said.

Carondelet will continue to operate Holy Cross Hospital in Nogales.

As for the Sahuarita area, Ramirez said Carondelet is conducting a survey of community needs to develop a comprehensive health care plan that it plans to bring to the Sahuarita Town Council in February.

When the 20-acre site for the Sahuarita hospital was selected about two years ago, Carondelet said it anticipated it would have the hospital open in 2011.

One possibility for the site east of the Sahuarita Town Hall is to first establish an ambulatory destination center (ADC), according to Sahuarita Vice Mayor Phil Conklin, after a conversation he had six weeks ago with Wes Colvin, chief operating officer for Carondelet Health Network.

An ADC offers the diagnostic services of a hospital but without beds dedicated to long-term patients. It would also have urgent care and primary care services, but no emergency room, Conklin said. Such a center could later evolve into a full-service hospital.

The demographics and a growing population are prerequisites to the hospital and updated population growth projections will be considered in business planning, Ramirez said.

Ramirez said hospitals have seen an increase in expensive emergency room visits as patients often use the emergency rooms for medical conditions that could have been handled in other ways, and this has resulted in increasing waiting times.

One solution is to increase patient access to primary care physicians and urgent care centers.

The new plan is to offer urgent care services in Sahuarita with physicians working in longer shifts and as the demand for services increases and as population grows, ambulatory and outpatient care services would expand.

For the immediate future, Carondelet is opening a 4,000 square-foot primary care and urgent care facility in February within the Rancho Sahuarita Marketplace center. The facility will have at least four physicians, three of whom will move from a facility in Green Valley that will be closed.

Carondelet isn’t the only Southern Arizona hospital group cutting back. A year ago, the group that operates Tucson Medical Center indefinitely put on hold its plans to build Rincon Community Hospital on South Houghton Road near the Civano development.

Philip Franchine, a reporter for the Sahuarita Sun, contributed to this report. Contact Franchine at pfranchine@ sahuaritasun.com or (520) 547-9738.