NORTHAMPTON — A $1 million present from an Amherst couple is supporting a $15.5 million project to renovate, reconfigure and enlarge the undersized crisis section at Cooley Dickinson Clinic.
The reward from John and Elizabeth Armstrong, announced Wednesday by Dr. Lynnette M. Watkins, the new president and CEO of Cooley Dickinson Health and fitness Treatment, will go towards the “Transforming Crisis Care: Marketing campaign for the Cooley Dickinson Unexpected emergency Department” that aims to elevate $9.3 million.
“Cooley Dickinson is grateful to John and Lise Armstrong for their generosity and for comprehension that charitable giving is a significant useful resource to deliver entry and produce the array of health and fitness treatment our neighborhood requirements, needs and justifies,” Watkins mentioned in a assertion.
The cash campaign commenced adhering to a pre-COVID-19 master services strategy undertaken by the hospital’s board of trustees that recognized the unexpected emergency department as the greatest precedence and to satisfy the unexpected emergency professional medical wants for everyone from infants to more mature older people.
John Armstrong, who worked for IBM for 30 decades and served as a presidential-appointed member of the National Science Board, claimed the donation to the clinic matches with his and his wife’s philosophy of providing.
”Lise and I are blessed to have assets and a person of our most important criteria for supplying is to support out appropriate in which we are,” Armstrong stated.
Chief Enhancement Officer Diane Dukette reported the venture, that will start out with a groundbreaking towards the end of 2022, will enlarge the unexpected emergency division that is 40{910b6bbd7d8df262ef2569b2fa1b6eeb3c466f4c7f0beab5b6a71914e3a3313c} undersized, and will assist satisfy the community’s requires by furnishing care to sufferers demanding vital healthcare notice.
The quantity of individuals checking out the section has grown from 17,000 every year in the 1970s to approximately 34,000 in recent yrs.
The preliminary design function will see the dimensions of the space boost from 15,620 square toes to 22,220 square toes, by bumping out the building close to the present-day ambulance bays, Dukette claimed. The challenge will attribute additional and much better-developed spaces that raise privateness for individual treatment, quicker obtain to computerized tomography (CT) scans, enhanced coordination of care to make it possible for deal with-to-experience communication involving companies and nurses and an increase in rooms from 23 to 32.
Other aspects of the venture include:
Improving geriatric care, with renovations that will allow the clinic to attain bigger amounts of accreditation than the recent Amount 3.
Growing the behavioral overall health pod, with extra specialized spaces to make a therapeutic atmosphere that respects privacy.
Developing a specialised pediatric observation device for youthful people when they will need to remain in the office right away.
A streamlined admission approach that improves patients’ admission practical experience.
Armstrong reported he has immediate encounter from three instances he has been admitted to the healthcare facility and understands there has been a increasing amount of clients. “Each time, I gained exceptional treatment and support irrespective of the point that the ED can be overcrowded,” he mentioned.
Elizabeth Armstrong claimed the donation will gain their good friends and acquaintances in their retirement neighborhood.
“We reside in a retirement local community with 115 other elderly folks, quite a few of whom need to have emergency division products and services,” she reported. “For their sake, as well as for our own doable long term requirements, we’re happy to have a part in producing the emergency division as effective and up-to-date as doable.”
Dukette mentioned the healthcare facility had not received these a important reward from a person alive at the time of the donation since Yankee Candle founder Michael Kittredge and spouse Lisa Kittredge gave $1 million in May possibly 2006.
“This is only the next time we have obtained a donation of this magnitude from a living donor,” Dukette claimed.
Scott Merzbach can be achieved at [email protected].