By Glenn Rolfe

LEWES — In 1916, Beebe Healthcare was founded by Dr. James Beebe and Dr. Richard Beebe, brothers who brought medical care to Sussex County, starting in Lewes, the First Town in the First State.

For more than a century, Beebe’s focus has been serving the county.

“Bottom line, upfront, I consider Beebe Healthcare a county asset, if you will,” said its president and CEO Dr. David Tam in a presentation at the Tuesday Sussex County Council meeting. “We are focused on Sussex County and only Sussex County.”

With that, there are growing pains. Beebe’s hub in Lewes is not ideal for growth, Dr. Tam said.

However, Millsboro, one of Delaware’s fastest growing municipalities, is a prime target area.

So are the Millville area — home to the South Coastal Health Campus on Roxana Road, which features a cancer center and a free-standing emergency department — and property west of Rehoboth Beach, which, in summer 2022, is scheduled to welcome the Rehoboth Specialty Surgical Hospital.

“We’ve been expanding a lot in Millsboro. We have actually proposed to the (Delaware) Health Resources Board that we will create another free-standing emergency room there,” said Dr. Tam. “That is something we are working on right now. We have submitted the application to HRB, and we are moving forward with that.”

The $124 million Rehoboth Specialty Surgical Hospital, on schedule and on budget, encompasses a portion of the approximate 50-acre campus along Del. 24.

“We have more land there,” said Dr. Tam. “That’s our opportunity for us now to move from Lewes — landlocked Lewes — to provide more services in the county in a more accessible format for the community, especially … as health care becomes more outpatient-focused than inpatient-focused.

“It’s a huge piece of land that we are looking at how to provide more comprehensive services, including that Rehoboth Specialty Surgical Hospital.”

Having served 24 years in the U.S. Navy, Dr. Tam employed military analogy in charting Beebe’s future. A map in his PowerPoint presentation to council identified Rehoboth, South Coastal and Millsboro as aircraft carriers — Nos. 2, 8 and 6, respectively.

“We believe if you think about No. 2 and 8 being aircraft carriers … the next aircraft carrier that would help us really support the county is where No. 6 (Millsboro) is,” said Dr. Tam. “So if you want to ask me — and I’ve got no secrets — where Beebe is going, Beebe is just doing everything we can to focus on the community, and as such, these other clinics are there — little destroyers or cruisers. But Nos. 2, 8 and 6 are where (we) are going to have our aircraft carriers that give us the ability to really blanket the community and provide services to the county.”

Dr. Tam emphasized that “one of the challenges upfront of Beebe Healthcare is that it has been landlocked” on the eastern part of the county.

“That is a huge problem, when really, at the end of the day, we need to serve all the county and every part of the county, when we are all the way in Lewes,” he said. “There is a lot more things that we need to be doing.”