JOHNSON CITY — United Health Services (UHS) is in the midst of its largest construction project ever, one that will upgrade and modernize its UHS Wilson Medical Center facilities in Johnson City. The $175 million initiative to revitalize the campus has been years in the making, UHS President/CEO John M. Carrigg says. UHS is just […]
JOHNSON CITY — United Health Services (UHS) is in the midst of its largest construction project ever, one that will upgrade and modernize its UHS Wilson Medical Center facilities in Johnson City.
The $175 million initiative to revitalize the campus has been years in the making, UHS President/CEO John M. Carrigg says. UHS is just over a year into the project, having broken ground in April 2022.
Dubbed the Wilson Project, it includes construction of a six-story, state-of-the-art clinical tower that will add 183,375 feet to the 280-bed facility. The tower includes four inpatient/medical suites, each with 30 private rooms, what will help the medical center transition from semi-private to private rooms, says Michelle Karedes, senior director of strategic facility planning at UHS.
While planning for the project began before the COVID-19 pandemic, the health crisis brought home the need for patient privacy not only on a personal level, but also on a clinical level, Carrigg notes. The number of beds will not increase, but the addition of the 120 new rooms allows the existing rooms to be converted to private rooms. Once complete, all patient rooms — with the exception of a few rooms in the trauma center — will be private rooms with private bathrooms.
“It’ll just be a tremendous boost in patient experience,” Carrigg says.
The tower will also include a new emergency department, a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) suite, and a surgical support area, helping bring services closer together under one roof. Currently, MRI services are located across the street, requiring transporting patients there.
“Having a modernized hospital right there in Johnson City is very important for us,” Carrigg says, adding it will bolster relationships with surrounding partners including Binghamton University’s School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Services.
“We pride ourselves on being an educating hospital,” Karedes says. The hope is that students, like the pharmacy students that job shadow at UHS, might want to stay on and work for UHS after graduation. The new, modern facility should help with both recruitment and retention, she adds.
A new rooftop helipad will serve the new trauma center. UHS Wilson is a level-two trauma center — the only one in the region. It can handle just about any trauma but does not include a burn unit or a pediatric unit.
UHS Wilson currently has a helipad, but it can take anywhere from seven to nine minutes to get patients from the helicopter to the trauma center, Carrigg says. The new helipad will have a dedicated elevator leading right to the trauma center, getting patients into the trauma center much faster. “This is where minutes matter,” he says.
Several phases of the project are already complete including upgrades to the generators, waste farm, and oxygen-bulk farm. Two new trauma rooms and a post-anesthesia care unit (PACU) opened. UHS will use the former PACU site as a corridor linking the existing facility to the new tower.
Radiography/fluoroscopy room upgrades and imaging support space work should be complete by August. Next spring, 28 rooms of the new emergency department will open along with the third-floor medical/surgical unit with 30 rooms. UHS expects to complete the new MRI suit next spring as well. The 4th through 6th floor medical/surgical units, with 90 rooms, will open in the fall of 2024 with the remaining 19 rooms of the emergency department to follow in the summer of 2025.
LeChase Construction Services, LLC is the UHS Wilson project’s construction-management company. Chianis & Anderson Architects, PLLC, is the project architect. Both companies have offices in Binghamton.
UHS obtained tax-exempt bond financing for the project in the summer of 2020. The state allows for up to 90 percent of a project to be financed, leaving UHS to fund the rest of the cost through hospital operations or fundraising. In that vein, the UHS Foundation launched a $10 million capital campaign about six months ago, Carrigg says. To date, the campaign — which runs through the end of 2023 — has raised about $7 million, he notes.
Founded in greater Binghamton in 1981, UHS was formed through the consolidation of three community hospitals. The organization now includes UHS Wilson Medical Center, 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 at locations throughout Broome and surrounding counties.