RADFORD - More than 20 surgeons and the Carilion New River Valley Medical Center have become partners in a new outpatient surgery center constructed near the hospital just outside Radford.

The $6 million 15,000-square-foot New River Valley Surgery Center will be the only free-standing facility in the valley for outpatient surgeries. Its staff expects to get its first patients around Oct. 15, depending on when state medical authorities make their final inspection of the finished facility. The center is a for-profit corporation, separate from the medical center which owns a half-interest in it. The other half of the ownership is divided among 24 surgeons from throughout the New River Valley who have invested in it.

"It's a true 50-50 partnership," said Matt Perry, medical center president. "This is the first joint venture of this kind in the New River Valley," he said. "It's not something that's that new in the country but, in this region, it was the first one."

Costs to patients should be much lower than they would be in the medical center, often by almost half, said Dr. William Bishop. That is because a hospital needs to invest in all the equipment which might be necessary for high-risk surgeries, as well as more support staff, even if they are not needed for minor surgeries such as those in which the new center will specialize.

All that drives up patient costs, said Bishop, an ear, nose and throat surgeon who is on the center's governing board. He said the center has three operating rooms and will activate them one at a time as patient numbers rise.

The surgeons who have invested in the center will be using it, but any qualified surgeon can also operate there, Bishop said. "You don't have to be an investor."

The new center will offer orthopedic, gynecological, plastic, urologic, ophthalmological, general, and ear, nose and throat surgeries, but surgeons will only perform the most simple procedures in those areas. The center is designed for highly predictable surgeries in which no complications are expected.

All its patients will walk in and walk out. "There are no patient beds," Perry said.

He said planning for the center began about two years ago.

Perry also said the center will allow more surgical specialities to be added at the Carilion hospital, where there has not been room for them until now. Doing the minor surgeries elsewhere will provide that space, he said.

He cannot say yet what those will be. "We're still in the development phase," he said.

The center was built byMarshall Erdmann & Associates of Madison, Wis. Perry said the company has built about 115 ambulatory surgical centers across the country. Woodrum Ambulatory Systems Development, which runs more than a dozen such centers in the country, has been hired to provide management services. It has corporate offices in Pasadena, Calif., Dallas and Chicago.

Shawna Hall, a Christiansburg native, is the on-site manager. She began working for Carilion in 1992 at Carilion Roanoke Memorial Hospital and transferred to the Radford hospital about two years later. She has worked there as orthopedics clinical team leader and manager of several different departments.

Since she resigned in April to take on her new job, Hall has been ordering the necessary equipment for the center and hiring the staff which now stands at 10 full time and five working flextime.

The center will be run by an eight-member board, including Dr. Michael Langely of Blacksburg, who will also be its medical director; Dr. Robert Stephenson, Dublin; Dr. Kevin Griffin, Blacksburg; Dr. Scott Urch, Radford; Bishop, whose office is in Radford; Joe Zasa, representing Woodrum ASD; Don Haliwill with Carilion, and Perry.