WVU-East Hospital Expansion is Right on Budget

By Erienne Greene, Journal Staff Writer

MARTINSBURG - West Virginia University Hospitals-East officials said Tuesday that City Hospital's $28 million expansion project is both "on schedule and on budget."

The plan for expansion is comprised of three individual projects at the hospital, including the construction of a new 11,840-square-foot cardiac catheterization laboratory, a 120,000-square-foot intensive care/coronary care unit and a 17,000-square-foot addition to the emergency department. A new parking lot also will be built to better accommodate the new services that will be offered following the completion of the expansion.

Tony Zelenka, vice president and administrator at City Hospital, said the total project started with - and still has - a price tag of $27,863,000. "The price has remained consistent from the beginning of this," he said. "The money is in the bank and designated solely for the project - and (it's) ready to go."

The new additions to the facility and the overall scope of the project will allow for higher patient capacity levels, with the facility being able to see 60,000 patients a year. He added that through the past 10 years, the number of visits to the hospital's emergency department has increased by nearly 13,000 each year.

The construction manager of the expansion projects is Howard Shockey & Sons, Inc. of Winchester, while Panhandle Builders and Excavating is performing site work, he said. "We've awarded 22 contracts to a multitude of contractors," Zelenka said. "Both site development and foundation work are 90 percent complete, with the complete structural steel setting now at 50 percent complete. We're starting on the northwest corner of the building and doing the cath lab and ICU first."

He also said the entire project's timeline is on track. "As we progress for the next three or four months, all the interior finishing will begin. We'll plan what these rooms will looks like, what furniture we need to get in there, what fabrics and colors. ... Signage is also being completed right now, too," he said. "All the interior work is what we're operating in parallel to the construction." He said the bottom line is that the hospital project is still on schedule for opening up the cath lab in September, and the ICU in December. The new ER will most likely open in January 2011. Zelenka said the project in entirety is going "exceptionally well."

"The methodology has worked very well for us so far, with very little or no change in orders," he said. "Putting the new facility in place, though, is only one-third of what's required as part of the project. The other two-thirds is that we're working on a customer service program that teaches all of our employees how to treat each other and patients in a very good manner. The remaining third, and last component of the project, is economic development."

He said the volume of patients that the hospital will be able to accommodate once the projects are complete will be dependent upon officials adding staff at the appropriate time to take care of the patients.

Since November, an expansion project also has been in the works at Jefferson Memorial Hospital in Ranson, and site work on the facility's emergency department has begun recently, according to Teresa McCabe, vice president of marketing and development at WVUH-E. She said the 6,000-square-foot expansion to JMH's existing emergency department, taking it from eight to 19 beds, will include a new fast track area, it will renovate the existing waiting room, provide additional parking, and add a decontamination room, as well as a link to a newly designed radiology suite.

JMH Chief Administrative Officer Dr. Tina Coad said in a recent statement, "We are currently averaging 22,000 patient visits per year and our existing space was not designed for these volumes." "This new design will allow for growth in (emergency department) patient visits until our new hospital is built," she added. Coad emphasized the "very aggressive" deadline by saying that people can expect the emergency department project to be completed by July.

"It's been a long time in coming, and things started coming together in late fall. The hospital family and the community are very excited about it, and it's been a pretty amazing undertaking," she said. "We're doing everything we need to do to make the building beautiful and complement the excellent service that we strive to provide."

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