In a parallel universe, there is an Athens with the "Taj Mahal" of health centers - Athens, Ga., that is.

The University of Georgia’s health center is more than triple the size of Ohio University’s Hudson Health Center — and still growing. Georgia has an enrollment of 33,831 compared to OU’s 20,435 students on its Athens campus.

Georgia’s health center has 13 clinics and departments, including sports medicine, physical therapy and dental. Its Acute Care Clinic, which provides treatment for illnesses and minor trauma on a walk-in basis, is open 12 hours a day and 14 hours over the weekends.

“Athens (Georgia) used to be a wasteland for medical providers,” said Jean Chin, executive director.

Hudson, OU’s aging health care center, opened in 1949. In a February presentation to the Board of Trustees, Vice President of Student Affairs Kent Smith urged construction of a new, larger health care center. Smith showed the trustees photos of Hudson’s chipped plaster, floors seeping with tar, walls marked by holes and storage areas converted to examination rooms.

Smith also noted Hudson’s small staff and office space in the cramped building. When Hudson opened nearly 60 years ago, the ratio of students to health providers was 700 to one, with eight positions for 5,600 students. With a current student body of more than 20,000, the ratio is now 3,000 to one.

Late last week, two students, including a Post reporter, and six administrators joined Smith on a one-day trip to Alabama and Georgia to compare and evaluate ideas for Ohio University’s proposed new health center.

Employees from University Planning and Implementation, Facilities Management, Student Health Services and Counseling and Psychological Services accompanied Smith to get more information about what would work best at OU.

The Board of Trustees is expected to vote in June on plans to build a new campus health center, tentatively located across from Peden Stadium at Tail Great Park.

Starting this fall, Hudson will charge students a $15 co-payment for a typical office visit and bill private insurers for services. In April, OU’s trustees approved an optional $40 quarterly health fee to fund improvements to health care. In 2011, a $37 mandatory fee could replace the optional fee to pay for the new building.

About 66 percent of the University of Georgia’s health center revenues come from a $174-per-semester mandatory fee, Chin said.

When construction on a 30,000 square foot addition to Georgia’s health center is finished, the building will exceed 110,000 square feet. The addition is about 6,000 square feet more than Student Health Services’ current offices.

“I can’t say enough that when you build whatever you want to build, take expansion into account,” said Lynn Tabor, associate director of support services.

Even though OU originally planned to increase the space available to Student Health Services by 8,000 square feet in the new building, the visits showed Smith that OU might need to think bigger.

“I’m just not convinced we have the right square footage in mind,” he said.

Chin said the clinic anticipated a roughly 3 percent increase in visits when the center opened in 1998 but actually saw an increase near 12 percent.

“We rapidly realized we were outgrowing this space, even 10 years ago,” she said.

About 40,000 people visit Hudson each year. Currently, about 24,000 square feet of Hudson Health Center is used by Student Health Services, with the rest going to Counseling and Psychological Services and Environmental Health and Safety.

The proposed $18 million health center is tentatively set at 75,000 square feet, but most of it would be used by nonprofit University Medical Associates and a diagnostics lab. Student Health Services will use about 32,000 square feet.

Smith, who was the dean of students at Auburn for two years before coming to OU in May 2006, was present for the construction and opening of the university’s new health center. Located about a quarter-mile from the main campus, the Auburn University Medical Clinic serves Auburn faculty, staff, students and administrators.

Auburn’s $6.8 million health center opened in 2005. Although it currently sees about 30,000 patients per year, the 41,000-square-foot building has the capacity for twice the number of visits, said Medical Director Fred Kam.

Auburn offers services similar to Hudson and does so without charging a student health fee. All the clinic’s revenues are generated through fee-for-service charges.

Jeanne Heaton, director of Counseling and Psychological Services, said she was concerned about locating OU’s health center so far from the main campus.

“I like for students to feel they can get there comfortably and not have a barrier to access,”she said.

“We really feel we’re the No. 1 chosen destination in Auburn,” Kam said.

Kam, who also advises a fraternity and has served on the student government’s board of elections, is a perfect example of the kind of person OU wants for its executive director of health services, Smith said. The official posting for the new position should be on OU’s Web site this week.

“We need someone to become that type of a face on campus,” he said. “He’s not just giving you lip service, and that equates to students feeling comfortable.”

Smith included The Post and a Student Senate commissioner on the trip to show students what could happen with OU’s new facility, he said.

“My real wish is that we could take the entire student body on a trip like that,” he said. “The average student hasn’t seen facilities like these.”