KINGSTON >> After twice being tabled, HealthAlliance of the Hudson Valley’s plan to create a new emergency room and make other changes at its Mary’s Avenue Campus is back on the city Planning Board agenda.
The changes, part of the planned consolidation of HealthAlliance’s two hospitals in Kingston, are to be discussed by the board when it meets at 6 p.m. Dec. 14 in City Hall, 420 Broadway.
The proposals were on the board’s September and October agendas, as well, but were tabled both times.
The HealthAlliance proposal, which has been submitted to the city Planning Office, calls for a new 48,000-square-foot, two-story emergency room to be built in the vicinity of the helicopter landing pad next to the Mary’s Avenue hospital (formerly Benedictine Hospital).
HealthAlliance spokesman Gerry Harrington said Monday that it was unclear whether company representatives will appear before the Planning Board in December. The city Planning Office, though, said a HealthAlliance representative did ask that the matter be placed on the agenda.
The new emergency room would be next to the space where Benedictine’s former emergency room was located. That emergency room was shut down and repurposed after Benedictine and Kingston hospitals affiliated under the HealthAlliance corporate banner in 2009. The affiliation process included building a new, larger emergency room at Kingston Hospital (now called the Broadway Campus) for $12 million.
The Mary’s Avenue Campus now needs an emergency room because HealthAlliance is planning to consolidate all of its hospital services in Kingston into that location and turn the Broadway Campus into a “medical village” comprising various services and educational venues.
The Mary’s Avenue Campus building measures 326,552 square feet. The Broadway building, about half a mile away, is markedly smaller at 237,000 square feet.
Still up in the air is whether HealthAlliance will get state aid for the consolidation-related costs. HealthAlliance has applied for $88 million from the state. Company CEO David Scarpino has said $48 million would go toward work at the Mary’s Avenue Campus and $40 million would be used at the Broadway site.
Harrington had said the company has been expecting to hear about that funding by the end of this month but had received no word as of Monday.
Besides the new emergency room, the application before the city calls for 54 additional parking spaces on the Mary’s Avenue property, an improved emergency power supply and relocating the helipad.
The “medical village” plan for the Broadway Campus calls for the Institute of Family Health, which serves Medicaid patients, being an anchor tenant. There also would be prevention advisers, job-training services and other community-based services at the site.
The plan to consolidate hospital services into one site was announced in 2012 by HealthAlliance, which said the move was intended to stem steep financial losses. The consolidation initially was expected to take 18 months to complete, but more than three years have passed since the plan first was unveiled.
In the interim, HealthAlliance has been working on a plan to affiliate with Westchester Medical Center in Valhalla.
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