As part of Ellenville Regional Hospital”™s determination to bring quality care to the tiny hospital tucked in the shadow of the Shawangunks, president and CEO Steven Kelley announced in 2005 that the 25-bed hospital would be growing its emergency room services. It was to be the first major change made to the hospital since it opened in the 1960s.
Two years later, the $1.3 million, 5,000-square-foot ER has become a reality, thanks to funding from a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services grant procured by U.S. Rep. Maurice Hinchey, a grant for $750,000 from the New York State Department of Health”™s Health Care Stabilization program, grants from state Sen. John Bonacic”™s office and from private donations from the many hospital supporters, particularly the Resnick, Gillette and McDonald families, longtime supporters of the back-road medical facility.
Deborah Briggs, a hospital spokesperson, says the hospital is waiting for the formal letter from the state Department of Health to begin welcoming patients into the new (and newly named) Gillette-McDonald Emergency Room, dedicated to the late John Gillette, patriarch of the Gillette family, and to Dr. Harold McDonald, an Ellenville ER physician for many years.
The new ER has been relocated next to the laboratory and radiology services, with a view toward creating a better patient flow throughout the hospital, says Kelley. The goal is reduced waiting times and better use of wireless technology by implementing bedside registration for ER patients.
When Kelley first arrived as CEO of Ellenville, the hospital was in a crisis, faced with bankruptcy and the community in jeopardy of losing its only health-care facility. Things have turned around under Kelley, who worked to bring the hospital out of bankruptcy and into the black, “thanks to the help and support of many, but especially of Mildred Resnick,” said Kelley when offiicials dedicated the new women”™s health center in her honor in 2006. (Resnick died a few months after it opened.)
Ellenville is not a tertiary-care facility, instead relying on its heliport to transport seriously ill patients to a hospital that provides cardiac catheterization and other services the small community hospital cannot. “Once they”™ve had their surgery, they can come ”˜home”™ to recuperate,” said Kelley during a February interview.
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The hospital is not the only building on the health-care campus seeing some changes. Plans are in the works for a three-story, three-building affordable senior housing complex next to the hospital, which will be built in three phases and managed by developer Jonah Mandelbaum. “The senior housing project applications are up in Albany, and we”™re waiting to hear back,” says Briggs. New affordable apartments for seniors close to health care, as well as accessibility to local stores and services, will help bridge a housing gap in the area. And a new ER doesn”™t hurt, either.
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