Expanded and modernized UHS Wilson gets ready to open

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.

Other projects

UHS, which anchors one side of Johnson City’s downtown district, has also made other recent investments into the community. On April 1, it opened a childcare center — a $6.5 million project — in a former Aldi grocery store building about a mile away from campus. UHS partnered with Bright Horizons to run the facility, which has 82 childcare slots. While 80 percent of those slots are reserved for UHS employees, the remaining 20 percent are open to the community at the facility, which is open from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday. “100 percent of those slots are filled,” Carrigg says, and have been since day one. UHS also moved its retail pharmacy in March from the main campus to a former CVS location right across the street. It sells both over-the-counter products and prescription medications and is open 24 hours a day. “We’re filling hundreds of prescriptions there every day,” Carrigg says. “We are just really pleased we can provide that service.” Between the childcare center, the pharmacy, and its flagship Wilson location, UHS is truly invested in Johnson City and sees a lot of synergy with the village’s planned downtown revitalization projects, according to Carrigg. “Everything that happens in terms of restaurants and stores and other businesses that are opening … is just a great thing for our employees,” he says. UHS employs just over 3,000 people at its Wilson campus. Along with UHS Wilson, the health-care system also operates UHS Binghamton General Hospital, UHS Chenango Memorial Hospital, UHS Delaware Valley Hospital, UHS Senior Living at Chenango Memorial Hospital, UHS Home Care, UHS Senior Living at Ideal, and physician offices around Broome and surrounding counties.