BANGOR, Maine — Eastern Maine Medical Center is on track to spend $305 million on a multiyear project to expand and modernize its State Street campus.
After more than two years of construction, the first phase of the project is slated for completion by the end of March 2016.
About six months from completion, hospital officials on Monday granted media tours of the eight-story, 350,000-square-foot addition, which the hospital broke ground on in September 2013.
Facilities slated to be operational in March include a new entrance, lobby, gift shop and dining area as well as a 32-bed cardiac telemetry unit and a 29-bed neonatal intensive care unit.
According to Jay Hagerty, a neonatologist with the hospital, EMMC delivers about 2,000 babies annually and provides care for another 1,800 to 2,000 newborns transferred from other hospitals.
“There’s more space per baby,” he said. “Every baby has their own … private room that allows us to do light, temperature, sound [and] humidity all based on that individual patient’s needs,” he said.
Second-phase projects will consolidate the hospital’s cardiac services, add 14 new operating rooms, a new post-anesthesia recovery room and a renovated labor and delivery unit.
Those projects, which are under way, are scheduled to be completed throughout 2016 and 2017 with the last items being completed by the summer of 2017.
According to Helen McKinnon, a registered nurse and vice president of the hospital’s support services, patient and doctor input played a heavy role in designing the expansion.
“We’ve been planning it for 10 years,” she said. “We’ve been getting input from a lot of referral hospitals, physicians and our patients for a long time.”
Each new patient room will be private and will feature expanded amenities for family members. The renovation also will replace the hospital’s 40-year-old kitchen that serves more than 1,000 meals per day.
The expansion will increase the hospital actual bed count from about 300 to 411, the maximum allowed by its certificate of need with the state.
Patients will likely notice that in the form of shorter wait times at the emergency room, McKinnon said.
“With the additional beds, we’ll be able to pull any patients that need admissions much more quickly,” she said.
Hospital officials estimated the total cost of the project, including about $40 million to replace medical equipment, at about $305 million.
That’s up from the $287 million hospital officials estimated at the start of the project more than two years ago.
Money for the project comes from a combination of bonds, MaineCare settlement funds paid by the state, operating cash and equity and private contributions.
Monday’s tours come after the hospital announced in March 2014 that it was facing a $7 million shortfall because of reduced government reimbursements, fewer patients than expected and an increase in unpaid care.
McKinnon said Monday that the hospital actually closed its latest fiscal year with a slim operating margin to the positive, and Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Lawrence McManus said the hospital is projecting a 5.4 percent operating margin for fiscal 2015, which began Oct. 1.
Asked whether the cost of the project would be reflected in health care costs, Lawrence said in a statement that the cost was considered in terms of quality patient care, the provision of complex medical services in the region and cost of future capital improvements. He did not indicate whether it would result in increased hospital bills for patients.
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