ONTONAGON — Aspirus Health will build a new $15.8 million hospital on the site of the current Aspirus Ontonagon Hospital, and is also closing the Aspirus Ontonagon Skilled Nursing Facility.

Construction is expected to begin in spring 2022 on the new hospital. The current hospital, which opened in 1969, had become too outdated, said Dylan Taylor, chief administrative officer at the hospital.

“It would require a significant investment just to have our air handlers, our heating and cooling system, working appropriately,” he said. “We determined it’d be more cost-efficient to just start with a new building versus trying to renovate and revamp the current space.”

The new hospital will be about 10,000 feet smaller than the existing one, which Taylor said would eliminate some of the excess space, long hallways and spread that had hampered workflow. It will provide the same services, including the emergency department, inpatient service, imaging, lab services and infusion, Taylor said.

The hospital will have five in-patient beds. The average number of patients at the hospital recently has been two or three, Taylor said.

“We really want to get into a footprint where we can create those efficiencies so both staff and patients can get from one department to another … we also want to look at our technology and really leverage the advances of technology, whether that be telemedicine or things like that in our rural area to make sure we have the best technology for our patients,” he said.

The new facility is still in the planning stages, including brainstorming sessions with Aspirus facilities planning and project management teams.

Architects will develop plans over the winter, with groundbreaking scheduled for sometime in spring 2022. The target is a January 2024 opening, Taylor said.

The decision to close the nursing facility came after a multidisciplinary team analyzed the patient trends as well as staffing difficulties during the pandemic. A number of staff have left during the pandemic either because of the increased stress or disapproval of the vaccination requirements, Taylor said.

The number of patients have also shrunk, with some people opting for home health after restrictions on visitation.

“We’re operating at half the census that we would have eight years ago,” Taylor said. “That’s not necessarily financially feasible anymore … we’ve been watching all these items and kind of come to the breaking point.”

Aspirus is working to find spots within the organization for the 29 staff at the facility, Taylor said.

Twenty-two residents were at the facility at the time of the announcement. The state has approved a relocation plan taking the residents’ and their families’ preferences into account, he said. Taylor said it should be complete by Dec. 1.