BY ADAM ATKINSONNorth Country This Week

POTSDAM — St. Lawrence Health’s $80 million regional care pavilion project is nearing completion and the SLH president says the new building will allow for major advancements in healthcare for the North Country.  

A grand opening for the 108,000-square-foot expansion of the Canton-Potsdam Hospital on Cottage Street, the first major expansion at the facility in years, is planned for Monday, Oct. 7. However, the new emergency department on the ground level of the huge four-story addition opened last week to the public. The new wing’s main entrance and lobby will be open to the public officially on Tuesday, Oct. 15.

“This is a game changer for health care in the North Country,” said SLH president Donna M. McGregor. “This project is allowing us to have a platform to expand, providing regional care.”

McGregor told North Country This Week the reason the health system calls the expansion a “regional care pavilion” was that as the hospital system grows and expands with continued integration with Rochester Regional Health system, CPH will continue to advance the services it provides at the Potsdam facility as well.

“This is a platform for growth and for the community for years to come,” she said. “We are super, super excited that this is happening. That we are able to open the ED (Emergency Department) on time. The project is not only on time, it’s on budget.”

McGregor said the project is all about community, and providing the hospital’s clinical, administrative and operational professionals with a state-of-the-art facility to provide care to that community.  

The regional care pavilion, costing a total of $79,860,000, is being realized (in part) by $15 million raised through community donations, local businesses and organizations, corporate sponsors, and events, hospital officials said. Additionally, Rochester Regional Health’s contribution makes this the largest and most visible demonstration of SLH’s integration with the downstate healthcare provider in 2021, and potentially gives the local hospital the capacity to grow with more advanced care. 

The new building will provide 60 private, single occupancy inpatient rooms that are 28% larger, as well as accommodations for family, where medically appropriate.

Eleven additional patient emergency department treatment rooms (for a total of 28 rooms) are also part of the new layout.

According to the health system’s numbers, the project has impacted the regional economy with more than $56,369,000 of the $79,860,000 project spent by hiring local subcontractors between Syracuse and the North Country.

More than $45,000 is estimated to have been spent in local restaurants during construction and there more than 800 stays at local hotels by contractors, hospital officials said.

Employee feedback

The new floors and new spaces have given the health system a clean slate and options with how care can be set up and provided there, and much of that has been influenced directly by feedback from the hospital’s practitioners, nurses and employees, the president said.  

McGregor said it was important during construction for the administration and engineers to engage with the hospital’s stakeholders, like its hospitalist, nurses and other employees to fine tune designs as things were being constructed.  

One change that resulted from the feedback is that with the hospital’s ICU remaining in the same space, the second and third floors of the new addition were reworked from initial plans to make patient transitions from ICU smoother and more efficient.

“Our nurses were instrumental with providing feedback as the project was evolving,” McGregor said.

The staff also provided feedback on patient comfort issues, art work and room staging to make it easier for patients to be cared for. McGregor said getting staff input was crucial.

McGregor said hospital staff were “excited to be able to have more space.”

The president said the new layout will allow support staff like case managers and hospitalists to work nearby on the various units directly with the nursing staff.

“Just the ability to have them all there on the units allows us to have more comprehensive care,” she said. The president said there will now be space for patient conferences and other collaborative care compared to before where some case managers were often working in the space of a closet.

Even more importantly McGregor said the new space provides more patient privacy for themselves and their families for recovery and important conversations regarding their treatment.

“It’s just a better environment for everyone,” the president said.

Trying to make the “way finding” in the hospital clear with more signage for employees and outside emergency personnel that may have to find their way around the building has been one of the priorities of the project, the president said.   

“This regional care pavilion doubles the square footage of our campus,” McGregor said. She said as employees take up residence in the new wing, there could be more changes to the hospital’s interior signage, as staff get used to “living” in the building.

More to do

Construction on the new four-story building will continue after the official opening ceremony on Oct. 7.

The new bed tower’s fourth floor, which will feature the maternity wing, will be completed in the “near future” McGregor said. The redesigning and reutilizing of the spaces CPH staff will vacate when they relocate to the care pavilion will also be a next step.

Outside of the remaining construction and relocations on the campus, the health system will be working to expand its services for patients at the facility and in the region.

“We are continuing to advance our care,” the president said, adding that a new spine care clinic will soon be available at the hospital and that CPH now has a thoracic surgeon on site for patients.

McGregor said SLH will further develop more comprehensive tele-health services, with technology and expertise available through its integration with Rochester Regional Health.

The president said the local health system will continue to work towards more alignment with Rochester Regional to provide the best care it can locally.

“Our goal is to be a role model for rural health from a national perspective,” McGregor said.

The president said she would like to see more vascular services be available at the hospital as well as urology care that can utilize CPH’s new DaVinci surgical robot in the future.

Credits community

“It’s pure joy,” McGregor said at seeing the pavilion construction nearing completion.

“It’s all about the community and to be able to have such a state-of-the-art facility to take care of our community, take care of our families. You know, you look around this hospital and the nurses that work here and the staff that work here are all members of this community, and it makes me so proud to have this project finished, that we have this state-of-the-art resource for years to come,” McGregor said.

“We appreciate the community’s continued support and look forward to growing our services to meet the needs of our communities,” the president said.

“I’m so proud of what we’ve done to date and proud to think about the advancements on the horizon going forward.”

“It’s not about the building, it’s about the community,” she said. “It’s what happens inside the building that makes the difference.”