Crouse Health turns focus to the final phase of $38M emergency-department project

SYRACUSE — With the first phase of the emergency-department project complete, Crouse Health now focuses on the second part of the project.

The next phase targets the existing emergency department, says Kimberly Boynton, president and CEO of Crouse Health.

“It will be renovated into space for our PromptCare patients and will we close the PromptCare across the street and that will be happening in September 2018,” says Boynton.

The existing PromptCare facility will remain open and available to patients until it’s time to move into the renovated space, Boynton adds.

“The importance of that is that it now brings the spaces contiguous to each other, so if you need the emergency room and you show up in PromptCare right now, you have to travel across the street or vice versa. Well, now, when you need our services, you’re going to enter through one door and we’re going to help with that decision of PromptCare versus [emergency department],” says Boynton.

Boynton on July 12 spoke with CNYBJ after Crouse Health formally opened the emergency department after Hayner Hoyt Corp. completed the first phase of construction on the $38 million project.

Its infrastructure and technology advancements make the new department “the region’s most innovative and modern facility,” Crouse Health boasted in a news release announcing the formal opening.

Besides the July 12 formal opening event, Crouse Health also held a community open house on July 13, and a tour for regional emergency-services providers the day after that.

The new space is “three times larger” than the current emergency-services area, the hospital added.

“We often refer to the emergency department as the front door to the hospital. That has always been the case here at Crouse, with some 54 percent of the patients we care for entering our system through the [emergency department],” Boynton said in her remarks at the formal opening event. “This important project has been years in the planning and is a tangible expression of Crouse’s mission to provide the best in high-quality, efficient, and accessible patient care…,” said Boynton. 

Crouse is naming the new department in honor of William and Sandra Pomeroy.

The hospital in March 2016 announced that the William G. Pomeroy Foundation provided a “generous” donation that placed the Pomeroy name on the hospital’s renovated emergency department. Crouse didn’t disclose how much the foundation donated. 

“A lot of blood, sweat, and tears by many people made this happen on time, ahead of schedule,” William Pomeroy said in his remarks during the formal-opening ceremony.

Pomeroy credited Crouse Hospital for preparing him in 2004 for a “life-saving,” stem-cell transplant in Boston following a leukemia diagnosis.