A Worthy Facility

It stops me every time we walk in. Looking at the old versus the new—it’s jaw-dropping,” says Hans Franklin, UHS Chenango Memorial Hospital Emergency Management lead, as he stands surveying the Norwich hospital’s new 16,000-square-foot Emergency Department (ED) and Walk-In Center.

The new ED replaces the 6,600-square-foot emergency room that has served the community for the past 25 years. It sits next to the new Walk-In Center, which is the only urgent care facility of its kind in Chenango County. According to Tanya Harkness-Huggins, nurse manager of Emergency Medicine at UHS Chenango Memorial, only a handful of healthcare facilities across the country have a similar hybrid model.

“Our community spoke to us,” she says, explaining that feedback from patients, area businesses, local EMS and other stakeholders guided some of the most important decisions in developing the space, particularly the Walk-In. “Now, we finally have a facility worthy of the patients and community we serve, as well as our caregivers.”

Both Mr. Franklin and Ms. Harkness-Huggins speak with pride when they talk about the new spaces, and rightfully so. They, along with many of their colleagues, were actively involved with the design and building of the custom spaces—a highly collaborative process that spanned more than five years and involved a multitude of clinical and non-clinical staff, medical providers, construction partners and other stakeholders.

“There was a very large team of people that made this happen,” explains Richard Stone, director of Support Services and Construction Administration at UHS Chenango Memorial. “Without the vast knowledge of these multidisciplinary teams, we could never have made this new Emergency Department and Walk-In Center a reality.”

According to Mr. Stone, patient privacy, patient safety, patient flow, staff workflows and convenience were all key considerations as the planning team worked to create flexible, modern spaces capable of meeting the constantly evolving healthcare needs of the community.

“One of the exciting things about the new space is the efficiencies and multiple capabilities that we built into it,” he says. “That includes five exam rooms that can be walk-in, emergency room or even observation. We also have the ability to have a full decontamination suite with full isolation suites occupying the same spaces. Our goal was to redesign ambulatory services to preserve critical safety-net capacity and create new space for a range of ambulatory care and social services. And that’s exactly what we’re doing.”