Hoboken’s community hospital is about to get a much welcome face-lift in the near future. Last Tuesday night, St. Mary Hospital, a member of the Bon Secours and Canterbury Partnership for Care, presented plans before the city’s Planning Board to triple the size of its emergency room.
According to Marie Droege, site administrator for the hospital, the expansion will provide enough space to comfortably handle up to 55,000 emergency room visits a year. The larger emergency room is needed to keep up with the growing number of patients treated there annually. The physical capacity of the present emergency department is listed at 16,000 patients a year, but hospital staff treated approximately 30,000 patents last year, she said.
Droege said that despite the cramped quarters, the hospital’s staff is safely able to handle the current work load but that the expansion will be a welcome addition that will give patients much needed comfort and privacy.
According to Droege, the emergency room expansion will cost the hospital approximately $5 million and take 18 months to complete once construction starts. She added that the hospital expects to have an official groundbreaking in June or July.
When finished, the new emergency room will have 21,000 square feet of space and 26 treatment rooms; currently, there are only 17. Also the number of emergency beds will jump from 13 to 18, and there will be two triage rooms instead of one.
Joan Quigley, Bon Secours’ vice president of external affairs, said last Tuesday that the renovated and expanded space would also be greatly modernized. "It’s our goal to retain the neighborhood feeling of old Hoboken, but to have the facilities and the equipment that represent new Hoboken," said Quigley.
She said in the remodeled ER, there will be a new section just for pediatric emergencies. According to Quigley, the area will have colorful wallpaper and soothing furnishings that will make already scared children a little more comfortable. Quigley added that there will be a full-time pediatrician on duty, which there isn’t currently.
Other improvements include an upgraded and greatly enlarged "fast-track” area for treating less serious conditions, such as sore throats, bladder infections, and cuts requiring stitches. Right now only cloth curtains divide the different fast-track areas, said Quigley. Under the new configuration, there will be several separate rooms, which will afford patients additional privacy. At present, according to Droege, there are only four fast-track beds, but when finished there will be 10 of them, and eight new observation beds.
Quigley added that currently, the ambulance and the emergency walk-in entrances in the waiting room are at the same location. In the new design, the two entrances are separated, and there will be a three-story glass atrium in the new waiting room. "It’s going to be absolutely beautiful," said Quigley.
There will also be much larger consultation rooms. Right now the consultation rooms are so tiny, according to Quigley, that only one family member can comfortably fit into the room. The new rooms will be much larger and can accommodate a whole family.
The hospital expansion also includes an area for a permanent, multi-million dollar magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) diagnostic unit, used to detect diseases of the soft tissues. Droege said that the MRI unit, which has already been approved and appropriated, will likely be up and running several months before the rest of the construction is complete.
Attached to the ER will be a brand new endoscopy suite. Endoscopy is a procedure that enables the examiner, usually a gastroenterologist, to examine the esophagus, stomach, and duodenum (the first portion of small intestine) using a thin flexible tube that can be looked through, and the digestive system is seen on a TV monitor.
Above the ER, there are plans to build four stories of doctors’ office space. "There is a huge shortage of space for doctors’ offices in Hoboken," said Quigley. She said because of the small size and expensive rents of most Hoboken commercial properties and the large size needed for a doctor’s office, there are very few opportunities for doctors and specialists to set up shop in Hoboken. An additional advantage of having office space in the hospital is that the doctors will have the unique support system that only a hospital can provide.
While the ER expansion will only cost $5 million, the total cost for the entire project, including the endoscopy suite and the office building, is $34 million, but much of the cost of the office building component, according to Droege, will be absorbed by a private developer who will lease out the space, not the hospital.