After reviewing preliminary plans, the Salem Township Hospital Board Tuesday afternoon voted to move forward with conversion of the now vacant ‘A’ wing into medical office space.
Hospital President Alex Nazarian says his goal is to have the project completed in a year, although he admits that could be unrealistic due to supply issues for building materials.
“Next step is to finalize the interior and architectural design of the A-wing. Fine tune the spaces like exam rooms, doctors offices, waiting room and general layout. Then the parking lot modification. As you know we have tiered parking not conducive to the type of service we are envisioning here. So with that we need surveys done, analysis of the soil underneath and a lot of engineering.”
Nazarian hopes to have some cost estimates to give to the board at their next meeting. He notes a changing need for medical care in the community will drive two other renovations after the A wing project. Nazarian says in the aftermath of COVID-19, they are seeing many more with mental health related issues.
“Our metric to provide care in an emergency room is 4 hours from beginning to end. However if you are trying to find placement for these patients it can take days and they are stuck in a room that was designed for up to 4 hours of care. So we have to adapt and change the ways we provide care so those kinds of patients are not unsatisfied.”
Nazarian says right now the emergency room has no room to expand.
“We are land locked. We don’t have space to expand outside so we have to repurpose space inside. So ER will move into spaces that currently is used by the surgery department. The surgery department will move to space where Rural Health Urgent Care is located.”
Meanwhile, the hospital is still waiting for IDPH approval to utilize the new emergency room entrance. Nazarian says while they can’t use the main reception area, they are able to utilize the new patient registration desks that provide more privacy than the old registration area.
Nazarian says the number of COVID positive cases continued to fall in September with 85 positives among 809 tests given.
Hospital Board member John Raymer announced he would be stepping down effective November 1st when he plans to move to Florida.
