Salem Township Hospital President Alex Nazarian is still hopeful that the renovation of the former A wing into a doctor’s office facility and the raising of the front parking lot can be completed at the end of the year.
He provided an update after Monday’s hospital board meeting.
“We are moving forward with this at a break neck speed. Outside you might not see much progress on our parking lot because we were waiting on some supplies to arrive but behind the closed walls of the A-wing there has been a lot of progress. The studs are up and HVAC system network is nearly done. So once we are done with that work we can start with the mechanical list.”
Nazarian expects construction to begin next week on the foundation for the retaining wall that will raise the parking lot in front of the main entrance doors to do away with the steps.
He told the board the hospital had a good month in May finishing $800,000 over budget. Nazarian says all areas of the hospital were at or above budget, except inpatient care which continued to see fewer patients than last year. However, total inpatient days increased from 100 in April to 179 last month. Nazarian says it’s hard to predict where the inpatient trend will go in the future.
