As they develop a cost-cutting plan, St. Albans, Vt.-based Northwestern Medical Center administrators also are planning a multimillion dollar emergency department expansion that will include new rooms for mental health patients, Vermont news website VTDigger reports.
Hospital leaders said the two efforts work together: Northwestern must take short-term action to "align our expenses with our revenues," a spokesperson said, but the emergency room project is "desperately needed and deeply rooted in patient safety."
The ED upgrade is particularly timely since the hospital has recently encountered regulatory issues in trying to care for growing numbers of mental health patients.
Northwestern has filed documents with the Green Mountain Care Board seeking a certificate of need for a renovation/expansion of the ED. The project is expected to cost $5.5 million to $6.5 million and may begin later this year, pending care board approval.
Plans call for renovating about 9,600 square feet of the existing ED while adding 841 square feet of new space.
The redesigned department will feature private treatment rooms rather than the current curtained treatment bays. The hospital also wants to add two more treatment areas and two airborne infectious isolation rooms.
The hospital also plans to add several "safe holding rooms" for patients who are suicidal or dealing with severe mental health issues.
"Having an outdated emergency department which was not designed for the volumes it treats and does not truly have the privacy or security that is best practice in today's standard of care is something we need to address," Jonathan Billings, Northwestern's community relations vice president, told VTDigger.