Mercy Health Partners

News Release
www.mercy.com

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Mercy Announces Plans for New South Knoxville Diagnostic and Physician Center

Mercy Health Partners today announced plans to open a new physician, imaging and diagnostic center in South Knoxville off of Chapman Highway in the old Food City location. 

The new center will be called Mercy South and will house a CT scanner, x-ray, ultrasound, mammography, bone density and lab facilities as well as providing primary care and specialty doctors’ offices.

Located at 7323 Chapman Highway, just north of the Chapman Highway/John Sevier Highway intersection, Mercy plans to spend $2.3 million to convert the old Food City building into medical office space.  The new center will have about 37,000 square feet of space and should open in September, 2010.

“This is a great, centralized location for providing medical services in the rapidly growing South Knoxville area,” said David Jimenez, Mercy Health Partners President and CEO.  “We also think it is good stewardship of our resources to adapt a vacant structure and convert it to medical use.  Instead of going to a greenfield and building new, this underutilized building will be returned to productive use for the people in South Knoxville.”

Mercy officials also said today the health system has signed an agreement with Lawler-Wood and CB Richard Ellis Company to market the Mercy Riverside campus on Blount Avenue.

The partnership will be working on the local, state and national level to market the 22.9-acre campus that has 535,000 square feet of building space.  CB Richard Ellis is one of the world’s largest commercial real estate services firm and the company’s Atlanta office is handling this project.

“Beginning the work on marketing the Riverside campus is consistent with Mercy’s long-term strategic plan and has been approved by the Mercy board.  When a buyer for the property is found, all healthcare services will be relocated to other Mercy facilities and Mercy support services on the campus will be relocated to other space,” Jimenez said.

Jimenez said there are no imminent buyers for the property at this time.  “Mercy has stipulated in the CB Richard Ellis agreement that physicians on the Riverside campus will be given at least 180 days of advanced notice before any changes are made to their lease agreements,” Jimenez added.

Mercy Health Partners was formed by the merger of St. Mary’s Health System and Baptist Health System of East Tennessee in 2008.  The new healthcare system operates seven acute care hospitals and 20 other healthcare facilities across East Tennessee.  In 2008, the Mercy facilities in East Tennessee provided more than $46 million in charity care and community benefits including services for the poor, community health screenings and research.

More than 1,000 of the area’s leading physicians are on the staff at Mercy facilities.  One of East Tennessee’s largest employers, Mercy has 5,700 associates dedicated to providing compassionate care using the latest medical technology.

For physician referral and service information, please call one of Mercy’s referral lines: Ask Mercy at 632-5200 (toll-free at 877-368-7362) or Mercy Wellnesse for Women at 877-599-WELL (9355).  A complete list of Mercy physicians, facilities, services and extensive health information is available online at www.mercy.com.

Learn about upcoming Mercy events and news on the Mercy Facebook page and on Twitter.

10/22/10, 09:32 AM