A Texas company is proposing a 19-bed, emergency-care hospital in north Minot that would employ about 60 professional and operations staff.

The Minot Planning Commission will hold a public hearing Tuesday on a request from Exceptional Healthcare to rezone property at the northeast corner of 46th Street (U.S. 83 Bypass) and Eighth Street Northwest from agricultural to general commercial. The property is on the north side of the bypass as the bypass runs east just before connecting with U.S. Highway 83 on Minot’s north side. The zoning request includes a preliminary plat and annexation.

Exceptional Healthcare, a for-profit hospital system founded in 2016 and based in Dallas, is proposing a 24,800-square-foot hospital with emergency rooms, in-patient services and a surgery center. The facility also would include a helistop for emergency helicopter pickup of patients who need acute specialty care at a large hospital elsewhere in the state. No aircraft will be on the site full time.

“Exceptional Healthcare is leading the country in developing a community hospital that can be built in rural America anywhere,” said Don Nicolini, vice president of real estate development for Exceptional Healthcare. The Minot facility will be the first of others planned in North Dakota by Exceptional Healthcare.

Exceptional Healthcare currently owns eight hospitals, located in Lubbock, Texas; Bullhead, Eloy, Maricopa, Prescott and Yuma in Arizona; Farmington, New Mexico; and Ardmore, Oklahoma. Its website indicates it expects to have 15 hospitals in eight states by 2027.

Minot already is served by Trinity Hospital, which operates a 600,000-square-foot facility with 147 beds.

Trinity’s huge complex does tremendous work in saving lives, but there are many instances in which a large complex isn’t needed to address a health emergency, Nicolini said.

“We are focused on attempting to address the wait times in the ERs, plus we provide overnight patient beds for those individuals that need overnight observation,” he said.

The hospital will have laboratory, imaging and pharmacy services. The surgical center will accommodate procedures associated with emergencies and that require anesthesia but the hospital will not perform scheduled surgeries.

“That’s not what we do. We take care of immediate needs,” Nicolini said.

Residents who receive their general care through CHI St. Alexius or Sanford clinics in Minot would have an emergency room option closer to home than Bismarck, with the ability to be stabilized and transfer to a larger hospital if needed. That particularly is a patient base Exceptional Healthcare looks to serve, Nicolini said.

Exceptional Healthcare also plans to have working agreements with all the region’s insurance carriers.

Nicolini said there will be a clearer timeline for construction of the hospital after the planning commission meeting, but plans are to apply for building permits in April with the goal of beginning construction a few months later. Construction typically takes 14-18 months, he said.