HOSPITALS
Major hospital construction projects set to begin
The hospital landscape in Buffalo is likely to change dramatically in 2009 as a handful of long-planned projects finally take shape.
Some of the biggest projects, such as the global vascular institute proposed for a site next to Buffalo General Hospital, stem from recommendations by the state’s Berger Commission.
Others, like the expansion of Mercy Hospital’s emergency room, reflect the need to update existing services and adapt to changes in health care.
Construction is expected to begin this spring on the $150 million global vascular institute, the most significant medical project in Buffalo since reconstruction of the Roswell Park Cancer Institute campus.
The project arose out of the controversial and complicated efforts to consolidate Kaleida Health and Erie County Medical Center. But it promises to lay the foundation for a signature medical program in Western New York capable of attracting more patients and adding significantly to the development of the downtown Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus.
A new, expanded emergency department will be located on the ground floor. Moreover, the University at Buffalo is planning to build a medical research center, costing around $100 million, next to or on top of the institute.
The building will sit next to Buffalo General on Ellicott and Goodrich streets, providing a connection to a parking ramp and proposed medical office tower across the street, and giving patients a new entrance into the hospital.
Advances in medicine have blurred the lines between specialties that handle conditions in the body’s vascular highway. The proposed institute, like many of the best medical centers, will bring together in one building different specialists who deal with the same diseases in different parts of the body — cardiac surgeons, cardiologists, vascular surgeons, neurosurgeons, interventional radiologists.
Completion of the building is scheduled for the summer of 2011, at which time Kaleida Health can move ahead with a related Berger Commission mandate — the closure of Millard Fillmore Hospital at Gates Circle and movement of its services and employees to Buffalo General and the new global vascular institute.
Kaleida Health plans to conduct community meetings to come up with an acceptable reuse of the Millard Fillmore site.
Kaleida Health is moving ahead with the major project despite the downturn in the economy. Moreover, the hospital system is continuing to work out the complex consolidation with ECMC and a new parent organization, the Great Lakes Health System, created to oversee the hospitals’ restructuring into a combined entity.
“The attitude here is that not doing the institute is not an option,” said Kaleida spokesman Michael Hughes.
Meanwhile in the Catholic Health System, Mercy Hospital in October broke ground on a $32 million, 46,000-square-foot emergency room addition to the front of the facility in South Buffalo.
The new emergency room at Mercy is the system’s second major emergency department construction project following similar work in 2005 at St. Joseph Hospital in Cheektowaga, and is the largest undertaking of its kind for Catholic Health.
Emergency room visits at Mercy have steadily increased in recent years, with over 37,000 patients seeking care at Mercy in 2007.
The new addition, tripling the size of the current emergency room, will change the hospital’s facade along Abbott Road for the first time since the facility moved from Tifft Street in 1928 to its current location.
Other features of the new facility include an expanded lobby and waiting area, expedited nurse triage and bedside registration.
Catholic Health also is immersed in a key Berger Commission mandate.
The commission’s original order to close St. Joseph Hospital was modified to allow the continuation of medical services in the building. The hospital network, with the help of an intense public campaign, argued successfully to keep the facility open but under a restructured operation.
St. Joseph will surrender its license to operate as a hospital and instead will operate as a division of Sisters Hospital. In doing so, St. Joseph will give up its 208 beds, of which 127 are currently in use.
The deal also calls for transferring, on paper, 123 beds from Sisters to St. Joseph. Sisters is licensed to have 413 beds, but only 288 are in use. The net effect: Between the two hospitals, the number of licensed beds will decrease from 621 to 413, although the state said it will reassess the situation in 2011.
The change is complex, requiring reviews of a host of issues, such as physician credentialing, vendor contracts, staff leadership, employee benefits and billing systems.
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