URMC: New Plan for Bed Expansion

By Carlet Cleare

Rochester,NY – The University of Rochester Medical Center is reworking expansion plans to ease overcrowding in its emergency room.

The $45 million project will add three new floors on top of the James P. Wilmot Cancer Center, adding 30 new beds.

Under the original plan, the hospital wanted to build a six story tower, adding 83 new beds. That plan came to a halt when the economy tanked last year.

The balance of the beds will be addressed in a second phase of the project, which is projected for sometime in 2014.

The changes come as the hospital deals with a new economic reality.

URMC Chief Operating Officer Mike Goonan says the two-phase strategy allows the hospital to get beds more quickly than initially planned.

"We can do this first phase, see where things stand in the community in terms of overall bed capacity, and then decide when to move forward with second phase ,which will build the rest of the pediatric beds and imaging," Goonan says. "In my view it provides us with ...it's more affordable, it's a more flexible plan that allows us to get some of these surgical beds on line sooner than later."

Goonan says the hospital plans to pay for the project with cash reserves, knocking out the $23 million balance in loans.

URMC plans to expand and renovate its pediatrics beds as a second phase.
That design has to be approved by the University's Board of Trustees

Dr. Thomas Mahoney, Associate Director of Finger Lakes Health Systems, says to address the critical need of overcrowded emergency rooms, the URMC, Rochester General and Unity Health hospitals requested 278 beds under the 20-20 commission process. Mahoney says state and local officials only cleared 152 beds among all three hospitals. The URMC's addition of 30 beds is included in that number.

Construction on the first phase is scheduled to begin in 2011, and is expected to be complete by early 2012.