On Sunday, March 3, the Hillsdale Health Center will celebrate the grand opening of its new John “Jack” MacRitchie North Addition with an open house, a ribbon-cutting, and a dedication ceremony.
The addition will be a skilled nursing facility fitted with 19 private rooms and a separate Obstetrics unit, Director of Development Judy Gabriele said.
“Everything is on target for the completion of the building right now,” she said. “The project began in October of 2011, and they originally said it would take about 18 months to build, but we have been ahead of schedule the whole time.”
Gabriele expects the addition to make a huge difference to the center as a whole, as it opens a section of private rooms, and the new space should allow the hospital to begin construction on other parts of the building that need to be brought up to date.
“Last year we had to send more than 150 patients out of Hillsdale County alone, since we ran out of space and so did the other centers,” she said. “Before it was all semi-private rooms, now patients will be able to have private rooms.”
The upper floor of the building will be fitted with private care rooms and a skilled nursing staff, while the lower floor will hold the new OB unit, which is fitted with new facilities and security.
“The lower floor is the new OB unit, which has all new rooms and its own surgical suite, as well as a separate entrance and lockdown unit,” Gabriele said.
Following the opening of the MacRitchie addition, the hospital plans to begin to rebuild the old upstairs unit, and fit it with more state of the art facilities to decrease the number of patients sent out of the county and increase the capabilities of the center itself.
Between the new addition and the improvements to be made to the upper floor of the current unit, the center projects the construction to cost just under $22 million. The new addition will be open to the public in the first week of March.
tsawyer1@hillsdale.edu
