Marlborough Hospital Preps For Expansion
Updates on the way for aging facility
By MacKenzie C. Kimball
Special to the Worcester Business Journal
The local hospital market is increasingly competitive, leaving many community hospitals struggling to find their niche as Boston hospitals begin to get a toehold in the region.
And when a community hospital has an aging facility, keeping up with the bigger hospitals — with bigger capital spending budgets — can be a challenge.
That’s certainly the case for Marlborough Hospital, according to Candra Szymanski, chief operating officer for the hospital, which is a member of UMass Memorial Health Care.
To address the issue of age and staying competitive, Marlborough Hospital has contracted HDR Warner & Associates, a Boston-based architecture firm, to develop a strategic facility master plan, which will concentrate on such areas as market demand, future capacity, function, technology and patient needs.
More Than Cosmetic
Szymanski emphasized that the strategic plan for the facility will be more than just cosmetic.
“It isn’t about an architectural drawing with which direction the doors will swing and what color paint will be on the walls,” she said. “It’s about giving us a footprint in terms of options for our future.”
In order to create such a plan, HDR Warner will look to a hired health care consulting group, made up of people whose backgrounds are in nursing and hospital administration, for guidance, according to Thomas Hess, vice president of HDR Warner.
The consulting group “will really help us bridge the gap between those working at the hospital, and their operational needs, and what we need to do in terms of design,” he said.
Bring On The Consultants
HDR Warner will use information from experts in the health care system to forecast population trends as far as 10 years from now. In turn, this data will predict what changes are necessary for the hospital to successfully serve its future population.
The organization has clearly outgrown the facility, but the physical structure is the last piece of this project. According to Szymanski, those behind the Marlborough Hospital plan “don’t want to simply add new buildings. We want the project to be focused, so the hospital can be as efficient as possible, still easily accessible to patients and not too cumbersome for our staff.”
Over the past 10 years, Marlborough Hospital and Warner have worked together on multiple projects, including an upgraded registration area and main hallway, as well as an 11,000 square foot renovation to the Diagnostic Imaging Department, which was completed in 2006.
According to Hess, HDR Warner has been involved in the planning and design processes of many Massachusetts medical centers for over 20 years. In addition to work done for Marlborough Hospital, the company has provided its services to UMass Memorial Medical Center, Barre Family Health Center, Cambridge Hospital, Somerville Hospital, Whidden Memorial Hospital, Sturdy Memorial Hospital and Morton Hospital.
Recently, many local hospitals have been upgrading their facilities and Boston medical centers have been providing their services in satellite locations. Just a few weeks ago, the Milford Regional Medical Center partnered with Dana Faber and Brigham & Women’s Hospital to open a new cancer center, a fact that has brought an added level of competition to the local health care market.
But Syzmanski said that “a little competition is healthy for all of us. It allows us to reevaluate the type of services we offer and the level of care we give to our patients.”
The initial phase for the strategic plan, which will span the next 16 to 20 weeks, involves extensive research, data collecting, and analysis. By the end of this process, Warner will have a master plan proposal outlining the direction and cost of the project.
Szymanski said a very rough estimate on the cost would be $25 to $40 million.
Whether the decision is to renovate the existing structure or build an entirely new facility elsewhere, the vision is for the hospital to maintain its strong position in the health care system many years down the road. “The hope is,” said Syzmanski, “that we’ll soon have a plan which will put our hospital in good position going forward.”
MacKenzie Kimball is a freelance writer based in Lexington.
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