Hannibal Regional Healthcare System is hoping to become the second health care center in Kirksville, joining Northeast Regional Medical Center.

HRHS CEO, Todd Ahrens, is hoping to provide more options that allow citizens to stay local, rather than having to travel out of town for specialized procedures.

So specialized procedures, are exactly what he plans to bring.

And so, the idea that we’re thinking about was to build an ambulatory surgery center," said Ahrens. "That’s a location, it’s outside of a hospital setting, so it’s not a hospital, but it would be a place where folks could get general outpatient surgeries, could do ear, nose and throat procedures, urology procedures. But really one of our big focuses is on cardiology. A lot of folks, when having heart issues, need to be catheterized, sometimes need to be stinted, and those are the types of procedures we could do in this setting.

The land that is being requested to be rezoned for this hospital is on East Illinois Street across from Leisure World Lanes, and is made up of 240 acres, and divided into three parcels.

While the sheer size of the land was a concern for the city council, Ahrens assured that this was not only the best option, but also the only one.

We’d been looking at opportunities here as far as expanding our footprint in the Kirksville community for at least 12 months. And I said it at the council meeting, if we could have found the appropriate amount of land that is already zoned commercial, we would have gone there, avoided this and the need to go through the rezoning process. Of our review, it’s just not there.

And for Ahrens, the process has been sweet, but he’s hoping it’s also short, because the sooner a deal gets done, the sooner they can break ground on the new health care center.

So, at the end of the day, I’ve enjoyed the process, even though I didn’t get the result from planning and zoning that I liked. Still hopeful that we can get where we need to be with the city council and I think that we made a lot of steps in that direction last Monday, and maybe we can wrap this up, and get to a good conclusion this coming Monday.

The discussion regarding the rezoning request will continue on Monday at the city council meeting at Kirksville City Hall at 6:00