Friday, May 25, 2007
By Jeffery Kurz

MERIDEN - Pressed by an emer­gency department that has been oper­ating at nearly double its capacity, Mid State Medical Center is planning its largest expansion since the hospital opened on Lewis Avenue in 1998.

The proposed $45.5 million expan­sion includes 100,000 square feet of new construction that will increase the emergency department from 28 to 52 treatment spaces and add a 30-bed inpatient pavilion, bringing the hospi­tal’s inpatient bed count to 162. The new four-story building will sit be­tween Pavilion D and the current emergency department. Plans also call for a new main hospital entrance, lob­by and patient drop-off area.

“I don’t think the need to expand the emergency department surprises anyone in this community,” Meriden Mayor Mark D. Benigni said.

Along with the new emergency de­partment and inpatient pavilion, the four-story building includes two “shell” floors to accommodate future expansion needs. The second floor is designed to house medical offices, while the fourth floor will be for fu­ture inpatient beds.

Mid State filed its intent to expand with the state Office of Health Care Access early this month. Plans are to complete construction in two years and open the new wing in the fall of 2009.

Operating at near capacity, Mid­State added 30 inpatient beds in 2003. For a while, that kept occupancy be­low 90 percent, but soon Mid State was operating at patient levels that con­vinced hospital executives that ex­panding just the emergency depart­ment would not be enough.

“If we just addressed the emergency department, we would be back to square one,” said Lucille A. Janatka, Mid State’s chief executive.

Janatka and Jeffrey Flaks, the hospi­tal’s chief operating officer, discussed the plan with members of the Record­Journal’s editorial board Thursday. In March, the newspaper ran several let­ters to the editor that were critical of the hospital’s emergency department and the crowded conditions there.

The new design does not have pa­tient spaces in the hallway, Janatka said. The emergency department has been using those as it tries to contend with overcrowded demand. The new inpatient pavilion will have private rooms and keep Mid State the only hospital in the state with private rooms hospital-wide, she said.

Mid State’s emergency department was built for an estimated 26,000 an­nual visits when the hospital moved from Cook Avenue to a new building near the mall in 1998. Since then, the emergency department has experi­enced a steady increase in visits, at a rate of about 10 percent a year since 2002. The hospital is on track to treat about 56,000 emergency patients by 2011, more than double what it was built to handle.

The demand on Mid State’s emer­gency services is similar to that of hos­pitals around the state.

“A hospital’s mission is to respond to the needs of the community,” said Jennifer Barrows, communications di­rector of the Connecticut Hospital As­sociation, which represents Connecti­cut’s acute-care hospitals.

“With every passing year these community and patient needs change and grow, and certainly the overall de­mand - particularly for care in emer­gency departments - has increased significantly,” said Barrows, in an e­mail.

The project’s cost of $45,589,500 in­cludes $32.6 million for construction, including renovation, about $7.9 mil­lion for professional services and cap­italized financing, about $4.6 million for medical equipment and $400,000 for non-medical equipment.

Mid State expects to finance $30 million of the cost through a tax-ex­empt variable-rate bond, with the re­mainder funded by equity and fundraising efforts.

“We will not go to the community,” Janatka said. Instead of a community campaign, fundraising efforts will be selective, she said, and focus on large corporations and past donors. The hospital will also look for funding help from the state.

The project’s design is by Perkins & Will, the same architects who de­signed the hospital and its additions, the Cornerstone Pavilion and Pavilion D.
“We’ll have a more appropriate and well-designed main entrance,” Flaks said.

There are 90 employees working in the emergency department. Flaks and Janatka could not say at this point how much additional staff the expansion might require.

"We've added staff every year," Janatka said. "The problem is they're cramped in the space they're working in."
"It's quite obvious that the emergency department at MidState needs to expand," Benigni said. "The city should support these efforts and continue to work with MidState to provide quality care for all our citizens."

"I, for one, even when they built the new hospital, had a feeling the emergency department wasn't going to be enough," he said.