By ANDY GARDNER

MASSENA -- Massena Memorial Hospital officials are looking at opening a hyperbaric wound treatment center, but they don’t yet have enough money.

“We have a final proposal. There’s more we need to button down,” MMH CEO Robert Wollebin said at Monday’s Board of Managers meeting. “It’s going to take a commitment from us … it’s a $300,000 capital investment.”

It would rival the Thomas T. Patterson Wound Healing Center that Claxton-Hepburn Medical Center operates in Ogdensburg.

“We have a lot of people that go from here and the reservation to Ogdensburg, a lot of them,” MMH Trustee Ed Hamel said, who is also on the board’s planning committee, which is taking part in the process of looking into a new wound center.

“The proposal is to have a comprehensive wound care center, two hyperbaric chambers, and doctors committed to the state-of-the-art treatment of healing wounds,” Wollebin said.

Kerry French, who was at the meeting representing the MMH nurses’ union, said their current wound-healing makes the hospital no money because they don’t have a doctor on staff.

“We expect that (a new wound center) will do okay … we’re being very conservative on that,” MMH CFO Patrick Facteau said.