Montefiore’s Mount Vernon Hospital has filed a Certificate of Need with the New York State Department of Health as it seeks state approvals go ahead with the expansion and upgrade plans that were announced last September. Regginald Jordan, vice president and executive director of Mount Vernon Hospital, told the Business Journal that the cost of the project, originally estimated at $41 million, has risen to $46 million because of inflation and various other increases in construction costs.
Jordan said that if during its review of the Certificate of Need materials that were submitted the state has questions or concerns the hospital would promptly address those. He did not have an estimate of how long the state review might take.
Once construction begins the project is expected to take about a year and a half to complete.
Jordan explained that the Certificate of Need for the Mount Vernon Hospital Master Plan covers three major areas.
“The first project consists of a newly expanded and modernized emergency department,” Jordan said. “Our current emergency department at Mount Vernon is 2,500 square feet and has 10 treatment bays. The new expanded emergency department will come in at just under 11,000 square feet and will feature 30 treatment bays.”
Jordan said that the new facility would have the capacity for about 50,000 emergency room visits a year. He said the second project consists of building six operating rooms of from 500 to 700 square feet each.
“They will feature the latest technological advances including robotics,” Jordan said. He said that the new operating rooms would allow the hospital to provide surgical services for complex patients and that will prevent the patients from having to be transferred to other facilities.
The third major element of the plan includes renovated and modernized primary care facilities and a family health and wellness center, and much-needed facility improvements such as lobby, exam rooms, and support spaces.
Jordan said that the hospital has already been doing some minor upgrades that do not warrant major construction.
“It’s modernizing the floors, painting, patching, upgrading some cabinetry,” Jordan said. “Additionally, last July we made a $20 million investment in Mount Vernon by transitioning to an electronic records system that places Mount Vernon on the same medical electronic records system as the other 11 hospitals within our system, so that was a tremendous game changer. The investment from Montefiore Einstein into this facility continues despite waiting on New York state for (the Certificate of Need) approval.”
Jordan noted that Mount Vernon Hospital is the only hospital in the city and they want to make sure that they provide exceptional patient-focused care.
“We want to make sure we’re in lockstep with the growth and development and we also want to ensure as the City of Mount Vernon grows that Mount Vernon Hospital’s services grow accordingly so that we can meet the changing health care needs of this community,” Jordan said. “The $46 million project is a tremendous start to place Montefiore Mount Vernon Hospital as a going concern and to make sure we remain financially stable. But, there are other projects that we have to complete as well: we would like to convert our semi-private inpatient rooms to private rooms; we want to modernize our Intensive Care Unit and build a new 10-bed ICU for critically-ill patients. Another project will consist of building physician practice space either on-campus or adjacent so that physicians can see their patients in the office and walk across the street or walk down the hall in the hospital to perform their procedures. There are four or five additional projects outside of the Certificate of Need.”
Jordan said that the proposed $46 million investment in the hospital will also act as an economic engine for the city.
“It will generate an additional 200 to 300 high-wage union jobs,” Jordan said “It will also generate another 200 to 300 construction jobs.”
