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The Llano County Hospital Authority Board of Directors welcomed the information that Scott & White’s CEO had put the new Lake of the Hills Regional Medical Center high on the list of achievements in a recent annual report.

Dr. Alfred Knight was reporting on the first year of what he called “our grand Vision.”

“We have initiated partnerships and alliances creating the Lake of the Hills Hospital, while also expanding our relationship with Metroplex/Rollins Brook,” he said. “A preliminary understanding with Hillcrest is also in place.”

Last year Scott & White opened its 72-bed University Medical Campus Hospital in Round Rock, the system’s first hospital outside its home base of Bell County.

Llano Memorial Healthcare Systems Rural Healthcare Hoerster Clinics became part of the system in April and a Burnet Scott & White Clinic is to open at 101 East Jackson Street in October.

The agreement with Scott & White and the LMHS provides that construction is to begin on Lake of the Hills when water service is provided at the site near the intersection of SH 71 and US 281.

The City of Marble Falls has been working on engineering plans and easements for water lines and a water tower. The city council should begin receiving bids on the year-long project within the next two months.

On a parallel track, the city began August 11 with the first in a three-phase process of annexation of the 500 acres of Flatrock Springs subdivision into the City of Marble Falls. That process should be complete by sometime in January.

Flatrock Springs developers Molly and Armand Biglari and Sam Martin donated the land for the 120-bed medical center.

Linda Meredith, chief operations manager for the Llano Memorial Healthcare System, said that new architects brought in for the LOHRMC by Scott & White propose a facility in keeping with the Round Rock facility but with a different structural plan.

“The plan evolved from four different models,” she said. “They chose one that they are taking to the Scott & White Executive Committee in September. It looks similar with rock and glass like the Round Rock hospital.”

Historically, the Hoerster Clinics in Llano, Kingsland, Marble Falls, Horseshoe Bay, San Saba and Mason have been classified as Rural Health Clinics (RHCs). The RHC program is intended to increase primary care services for Medicaid and Medicare patients in rural communities.

LMHS CEO Kevin Leeper, with an eye to the future, said new criteria for RHCs could effect their special status for reimbursement with federal programs. That status has been a key element in Llano Memorial Hospital finances in the past.

A new development in the corporate world brought together two companies that have been key to LMHS. That is the merger of Dairyland Healthcare Solutions and Advanced Professional Software (APSWaco).

Billing has been one of the biggest headaches of the LMHS. The merger of its current and former software providers comes just as two years of headaches over the transition are subsiding.

The proposed name for the new company is Healthland.

The board heard a report on the Medical Staff Executive Committee. The group consists of Dr. Kim Russell, chief of staff and a physician in the Kingsland Hoerster Clinic; Dr. Mike Cravey of the Marble Falls Hoerster Clinic and past chief of staff; Dr. Randall Grimshaw, emergency room physician and first vice chief; Dr. Janice Pruessner of the Llano and Kingsland Hoerster Clinics and second vice chief, and Dr. Warren Roche of the Hoerster Lake Area Health Center, the member at large.