JOHNSON CITY — After five long years of planning, including just over two years of construction, United Health Services (UHS) is expected to open its new six-story expansion and modernization at UHS Wilson Medical Center in Johnson City sometime in June. The $175 million Wilson Main Tower project, which broke ground in April 2022, adds […]
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JOHNSON CITY — After five long years of planning, including just over two years of construction, United Health Services (UHS) is expected to open its new six-story expansion and modernization at UHS Wilson Medical Center in Johnson City sometime in June.
The $175 million Wilson Main Tower project, which broke ground in April 2022, adds 183,375 feet of new clinical space to the 280-bed hospital facility that brings the patient experience and privacy to the forefront, UHS President/CEO John M. Carrigg tells CNYBJ in a May 10 interview.
“Patients are active consumers of health care,” he says, and privacy is the expectation now. Along with patients expecting it, the solitude afforded by private rooms — instead of the once-common semi-private, shared rooms — also yields better clinical results including better healing, lower risk of spreading infection, and more care involvement by family and loved ones, he adds.
Through the project, UHS converted all its rooms to private rooms, so it keeps the same 280-bed capacity for inpatients, but serves those patients from private, larger rooms. UHS sees about 15,000 inpatients annually.
UHS will expand capacity in its new emergency and trauma department on the first floor. The new area will combine new space with the renovated former emergency department (ED) space to provide an ED and trauma center that is three times larger than its predecessor. It will offer 45 private ED treatment areas and four trauma treatment areas.
“That’s a pretty significant increase,” Carrigg notes. With more than 50,000 patients treated annually, the new ED is well-prepared to handle the influx.
Much of the design for the project took place during the pandemic, he says, and that heavily influenced the process. Along with privacy, the new rooms also make it much easier to isolate patients if needed. New air-exchange equipment helps keep the hospital’s air safe to breathe.
“There will be some germ or virus that we’ll have to deal with, and we are significantly more prepared for that now,” Carrigg says.
Other features of the new tower addition include a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) suite, a surgical-support area, and a rooftop helipad. The new space will house various departments including neurosciences and neurosurgery, surgical, oncology, and cardiology.
Those departments will move to the new space in stages, with neurosciences and neurology set to move first, Carrigg says. “There’s an incredibly detailed plan to make that happen,” he says. Patients will move one at a time, with a team surrounding them, and he expects the department move will take four to five hours.
