If the Board of Trustees approves plans for a new campus health facility in April, Ohio University students will finance part of the debt through a mandatory fee starting 2011.
The mandatory quarterly fee, introduced at a Resources Committee meeting earlier this month, would replace an optional fee proposed through a Student Health Services plan earlier this year. If both plans are approved at the board's April 18 meeting, students would have the optional $40 quarterly fee until 2011, when the mandatory $37 fee would kick in to pay for the $18 million facility.
The new building, located across from Peden Stadium at Tail Great Park, would provide space for Student Health Services, the non-profit University Medical Associates and a diagnostics lab.
Funding for the construction would come from a $20 million state-issued bond, spread out over 25 years at 5 percent interest, said Bill Decatur, vice president for Finance and Administration.
In addition to the mandatory fee, rent payments from the diagnostics center and UMA, a private practice comprising doctors from the OU College of Osteopathic Medicine, would repay the debt, Decatur said.
If the plan is approved, the health center would be the second building students will be subsidizing through required fees. Students currently pay a $60-per-quarter fee for Baker University Center, the debt for which will not be paid off until 2032.
Regardless of board approval, Hudson will begin charging students a co-payment and billing their private insurers this fall.
The mandatory quarterly fee, which consists of about $13 for the new facility and about $23 for enhanced health services such as increased hours, is separate from a business plan presented to Student Senate in February. That plan introduced the optional fee with co-payments for those foregoing the charge, said Jenny Hall-Jones, interim assistant to the vice president for Student Affairs.
Unlike the building portion of the mandatory quarterly fee, the enhanced services charge would continue for an undetermined period of time after the debt is repaid, Hall-Jones said.
In addition to the rents and student fees, which alone would not cover the construction costs, the College of Osteopathic Medicine will provide an annual subsidy starting at more than $280,000 for fiscal year 2011, Decatur said.
For the college, which already subsidizes the malpractice insurance of the physicians in UMA, this space is essential for recruitment, said Jack Brose, dean of the college.
UMA, which currently pays $8.75 per square foot to lease Parks Hall, is indispensable as a clinic for OU-COM physicians, Brose said.
Without UMA you would have great difficulties running the (college) from a clinical practice and from a service to the community standpoint
Brose said.
A growing class size in the college adds urgency to move forward with the building proposal, said OU President Roderick McDavis.
This is not really a luxury conversation he said. This is a critical conversation for the College of Osteopathic Medicine.
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