New construction will house 35-single-bedded Patient Care Unit, Graduate Medical Education Program, and State-of-the-Art Conference Center
(Port Jefferson, NY) A groundbreaking for a new patient care pavilion at John T. Mather Memorial Hospital marks a major commitment by the Hospital to address the current and future medical needs of the communities it serves.
The expansion, the first at Mather in more than a decade, will house a 35-single-bedded patient care unit; offices and teaching facilities for a Graduate Medical Education Program with residencies in Internal Medicine, Family Practice Medicine, Psychiatry and Transitional Year; and a state-of-the-art conference center. The new facility will be known as the Arthur & Linda Calace Family Pavilion and will add more than 28,400 square feet of space to the existing hospital.
“This is not merely a building, but a building for the future of healthcare for our community,” said Kenneth Jacoppi, Chairman of the Board of Directors at Mather Hospital.
The project will create 70 single-bedded rooms by converting 35 semi-private rooms to private rooms and building 35 new rooms in a new patient care unit to be located on the third level of the new Pavilion.
“Single-bedded rooms have become the standard in healthcare today, but private rooms currently make up only 13 percent of Mather’s medical-surgical patient rooms. At the completion of this project, the majority of the medical/surgical patient care rooms will be single bedded,” said Kenneth Roberts, President of the Hospital.
There are many benefits to having a large compliment of single bedded rooms, including fostering the healing process by reducing noise levels and patient stress. Additionally, private rooms reduce the risk of infection spreading among patients and, according to studies, reduce the length of a hospital stay. Because the new unit will also have telemetry, the ability to monitor a patient’s vitals through wireless technology, the number of patient transfers between rooms and waiting times for a room will both be reduced.
The second floor of the Pavilion will house offices and conference rooms for a new Graduate Medical Education Program. Mather plans to welcome its first class of residents in Internal Medicine in July 2014.
In a recent study by the Healthcare Association of New York State more than 1,200 doctors are needed statewide, one third of them in primary care.
With the recent implementation of the Affordable Care Act, projections indicate that the number of New Yorkers who will be covered by health insurance will increase by 1.2 million people, significantly adding to the demand for primary care physicians. At the same time, large numbers of our community members are entering their retirement years, a time when healthcare utilization dramatically increases.
“We believe some doctors who completed their residencies at Mather will choose to stay and practice in our beautiful community and become the care providers for our families and neighbors,” Roberts said.
The first floor of the Pavilion will be a new state-of-the-art conference center that will facilitate high quality educational opportunities for future doctors through technology that supports distance learning. The center of learning will also be available to other staff as well as the community at large for health symposiums and support group meetings.
Project Made Possible Through Philanthropy
The building is anticipated to cost $20 million to construct. In addition, the Hospital is seeking to raise $5 million in philanthropic support.
“We started our capital campaign in March of this year and to date we’ve raised approximately $3.3 million primarily due to the generosity of local philanthropists Arthur and Linda Calace, Robert and Kathy Frey, and our outstanding Auxiliary Volunteers,” said James Danowski, Chairman of the JTM Foundation which seeks charitable support for Mather Hospital.
“The Calaces, the Freys, our Auxiliary volunteers—each one is an investor in healthcare for our community. Their return is the knowledge that our community will benefit from their philanthropy for generations to come,” he added.
John T. Mather Memorial Hospital is an accredited 248-bed, non-profit community hospital dedicated to providing a wide spectrum of high quality healthcare services to Suffolk County residents, showing compassion and respect and treating each patient in the manner we would wish for our loved ones.
For further information about Mather Hospital, visit www.matherhospital.org or “Like” us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/matherhospital.
