Milford Medical Center To Solidify Roots With Expansion
PHOTO/COURTESY
Milford Regional Medical Center is hoping to construct a $40 million, 60,000-square-foot expansion, a rendering of which is shown above.
Milford Regional Medical Center's proposed $40-million, 60,000-square-foot expansion of its intensive care and emergency departments announced this week are affirmation of the hospital's roots in the southern-495 region and a commitment to the hospital's future, organization leaders said.
Coming off a strong year in 2011, made possible by a series of cost-saving measures, hospital President Edward Kelly and CEO Frank Saba announced the planned expansion at the hospital's annual meeting on Monday night.
While the project is still in the early planning stages -Saba estimated it could be two years before the project is completed - Saba and Kelly said the expansion will allow the hospital to better serve the community.
"We try very hard to respond to what we feel our community's needs are," Saba said. "This project is in response to some of the needs that our community has and those that we see in the medical center here. It's about serving the community."
Just What The Doctor Ordered
The expansion, which will be two 30,000-square-foot floors, will complement the hospital's current 283,000-square-foot facility on 14 acres in Milford. It will be attached to the hospital's existing building on the Route 16 side of the hospital.
It will include an emergency room that will have the capacity to serve up to 80,000 patients a year. Kelly said the hospital's current ER is undersized and overcrowded, serving about 60,000 patients a year.
The expansion will also include a new intensive care unit that will increase in size from a 10-bed facility built in 1981 to a 16-bed facility, Kelly said.
The expansion will also include medical imaging and surgical features, including diagnostic radiology and CAT scan machines.
Officials said the expansion is a commitment by the hospital to continue serving the southern-495 region and a credit to its success.
According to the hospital's annual report, Milford Regional Medical Center increased profits in 2011 to $6.6 million from $666,000 in 2010. Revenues, meanwhile, rose 3.4 percent year over year to $238 million, while expenses increased less than 1 percent to $232 million.
The figures continue a trend of positive financial results for the hospital during the past few years. According to the state's Division of Health Care Finance and Policy, since 2007 the hospital has had a $32-million operating surplus. In Central Massachusetts, that's third behind the University of Massachusetts Medical Center's $225-million surplus and Saint Vincent Hospital's $111-million surplus during that time period. By comparison, MetroWest Medical Center in Natick and Framingham has a negative $42-million operating margin, according to the state.
Saba and Kelly agree that the hospital's independence, combined with its geographic presence and health care professionals have all contributed to its success.
The hospital has relationships with UMass Medical Center and some of Boston's top hospitals, including Brigham &Women's and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, which Saba said allows the Milford hospital to send patients to hospitals that may have different expertise, and allows staff from those hospitals to see patients in Milford.
As for its geography, Saba said being centrally located between the urban hubs of Boston and Worcester and near Interstate 495 has made the hospital not only easily accessible to a large number of people, but also convenient.
Outpatient visits for the hospital, for example, grew 1.5 percent in 2011, to 264,000. And while inpatient stays at the hospital fell less than 1 percent on the year, so too did the average length of stay for patients.
All of these factors have contributed to Milford Regional Medical Center officials' plan for an expansion.
An architect and contractor will need to be hired; Saba said hospital officials will examine what financial capacity the hospital has to borrow money. That, he said, will in part determine how much of a fundraising campaign the hospital will need to run to help execute the project.
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