Work underway at Saint Thomas River Park Hospital in McMinnville to expand the emergency department and intensive care unit.
Hospital CEO Dale Humphrey said the facility received a $7.6 Million matching federal grant for the upgrades. Humphrey said COVID revealed the hospital simply did not have enough room for surges in patient count.
“And I believe our government sort of recognized the fact that we have to have strong hospitals to have strong and health communities,” Humphrey said. “And so, it’s vital that we have the right amount of beds to provide those services.”
Humphrey said the grant requires the money be used to add beds. Humphrey said the Intensive Care Unit will increase from 8 beds to 12. The Emergency Department will grow by nine to 21.
Humphrey said getting this grant money for beds frees up money for the hospital to make improvements in other areas.
“We’re sort of like the household,” Humphrey said, “When you’ve got money and you’ve got extra, we reinvest that back into the facilities. And when we don’t have extra funds or have limited amount of funds, it limits the things we can do.”
Humphrey said the hospital will purchase a surgical robot, a CT scanner and has begun inpatient dialysis. Humphrey said these are things the hospital may not have been able to afford it it had not been for the grant funds for the beds.
Humphrey said, as CEO, it is very satisfying to be part of this major hospital expansion.
“I get to participate in the healing of other human beings without having that god-given gift to be in one of those clinical specialties,” Humphrey said. “So, it’s really hugely rewarding to know that we’ve accomplished this for the community and improved the services in so many other areas because we could divert our focus into those places as well, due to the funding.”
Humphrey said the ICU expansion is expected to be completed in September. The Emergency Department expansion should be finished by next February.
