The former Au Bon Pain cafe at 60 Livingston Street in Poughkeepsie is now called the Prototype Experience. Inside this space, open to the public from 2 to 5pm on Wednesdays, are renderings of the $545 million Vassar Brothers Medical Center inpatient pavilion, which is beginning to rise along Route 9 in Poughkeepsie. There are also blueprints, swatches of the carpet that will be installed in the pavilion, and two prototype rooms: a medical/surgical patient room and an intensive care unit room.
Both rooms are meant to look exactly like the 264 patient rooms and 30 ICU rooms that'll be ready for use in late 2019, when officials say the pavilion is scheduled to open. They're outfitted with beds, medical technology, televisions, and bathrooms.
Though the rooms offer people a detailed example of what they'll see when the pavilion opens, they're still facsimiles. The toilet in the bathroom isn't connected to pipes. The television doesn't turn on. And the "window" scene is a print depicting the Mid-Hudson Bridge and a river view.
When posited to Timmian Massie, the senior vice president of marketing, public affairs, and government relations at Health Quest, which operates Vassar Brothers Medical Center, that one feels as if he has stepped onto a Hollywood set, Massie is quick with a response: "Poughkeepsie Hope."
Ground broke on the largest construction project in Poughkeepsie history in September 2016. Once it opens, the 752,000-square-foot, eight-story Vassar Brothers Medical Center inpatient pavilion will overlook the Hudson River in the shape of a wave. Some could mistake it for a hotel, with its glass exterior, outdoor dining area, conference center, and spacious, private patient rooms.
As cranes lift steel into place and the structure takes shape, Vassar Brothers and local officials see the new pavilion, with its grand scope, as a game-changer for health care in the Hudson Valley, Dutchess County, and Poughkeepsie. "This historic undertaking will improve the quality of lives for county residents, and firmly establish Dutchess County as a leader in the region in patient care," says Dutchess County Executive Marcus Molinaro. "This expansion will continue to fuel the health care sector of our economy with new jobs and opportunities."
But will patients respond to the new pavilion by staying local for care, or will they travel north or south? Vassar Brothers officials hope the expansion will give them no reason to leave the area.
A BIGGER SLICE OF THE PIE
In 1959, Vassar Brothers opened its Community Circle care center at the hospital, reflecting a mid-century trend of circular patient-care levels, which were typically designed to minimize the time it took doctors and nurses to reach patient rooms, and to centralize activity. In the center of each level is the nursing station, while the patient rooms line the exterior like pie slices.
But the patient rooms at Vassar Brothers are typically 243 square feet and have two beds, which creates problems. First, it's difficult for a patient to have conversations about private matters when there's a roommate. Second, one patient may be trying to sleep while the other is watching television or seeing visitors. And sometimes a patient can't be moved into a room either because of infection danger or the simple fact that the other patient in the room is of another gender, thus creating blockages.
The new facility eliminates these problems with private rooms, 66 each on levels four through seven. Each patient will have a 330-square foot space to recover, outfitted with two televisions—one for the patient and another for guests, installed next to a pullout sofa. Moreover, the rooms will have WiFi access and USB ports to charge portable devices, and their bathrooms will include a walk-in shower with enough space for wheelchair access.
Aesthetically, the patient rooms, lobbies, and waiting rooms are supposed to evoke a sense of calm. Rooms will be painted in a soft shade of blue, green, purple, or yellow, depending on their level. Paintings, primarily depicting nature scenes, will decorate the walls, and larger windows are planned, both to bring in more light and to emphasize views of the Hudson River on one side and the Poughkeepsie cityscape on the other side.
Plus, while press materials on the pavilion's design emphasize how it mirrors the river's curvature, the choice to shape it like a wave is also reflective of a contemporary model that showcases soft, gentle curves and not long, straight hallways, another way to evoke calm. "When patients and visitors are in the hospital, one thing they have is a lot of time, so they're walking up and down the hallways," says Larry Bell, vice president of construction for Health Quest. "You don't have this feeling that you're just a small part in this long hallway."
Each room also has a 360-degree articulated arm designed to hold a laptop to collect patient information. Outside every room will be a standalone computer where physicians can also input data. A camera will be installed in each room for Skype compatibility, so if a patient needs a specialist who's in another location, he or she can be accessed remotely.
Of course, technology can and will change rapidly, but hospital officials say they're ready to respond. "We want to make sure that when the facility opens in two years, we're going to be fully updated with technology," says Bell. "The change is happening out there, and it's phenomenal."
ACCENT ON ACCESSIBILITY
Vassar Brothers' expansion includes a new 58,000-square-foot emergency room and trauma center. Currently the hospital fits approximately 75,000 emergency patients annually into about 30,000 square feet of a cramped space dating to the 1920s, which means patients are left waiting for an open bed.
The new emergency room will have 66 treatment rooms and 15 operating suites as large as 805 square feet, and will comprise an entire wing on the first floor of the new pavilion. "People don't want to wait for emergency care anymore," says Dr. Daniel O'Dea, vice president of cardiovascular services at Health Quest. "The current layout is not conducive to opening up the rooms necessary to pull in those patients."
Working as a cardiologist at Vassar Brothers for the last 25 years, Dr. O'Dea has seen plenty of changes in how health care is delivered. When he started at Vassar, doctors and surgeons didn't stay at the hospital full-time, which meant they weren't always readily available for emergencies.
O'Dea cited that in 1992—according to an article published in the New England Journal of Medicine—15 percent of people admitted to American emergency rooms after heart attacks died in the hospital. The medical community has made steps to reach patients faster, including bringing doctors into the hospital full-time. In a 2013 New England Journal of Medicine report, the rate of hospital deaths after a heart attack was at 4.7 percent.
As efficiency remains a paramount concern for the medical community, Vassar Brothers officials are emphasizing cutting down wasted time in its pavilion plan. For example, the pavilion includes five ambulance bays with access to elevators that lead to the emergency room, a complete change from the current practice of wheeling an emergency patient from a lot across the hospital to the entrance.
"We're going to get patients through the system more quickly," says O'Dea. "We're going to be much more efficient in moving people up to the floors, and get to more people in a shorter period of time."
Home is Where the Health Is
The new pavilion has a host of other amenities that make it feel more like a hotel than a traditional hospital. Vassar Brothers hopes to entice community entities to host meetings in the 300-seat, first-floor conference center. The 240-seat cafeteria includes an outdoor veranda space overlooking the Hudson, plus a neighboring garden for an additional aesthetic draw. The physicians' lounge has sleek furniture, the kind you'd find in any modern hotel bar.
Officials mention how they hope these features bring the community to them, from the groups that'll potentially book the conference room to the new physicians who could move to the mid-Hudson Valley so they can work in a sparkling new facility with the latest technology.
Ultimately, though, it's about the people that need treatment, and in recent years, other health care providers have moved into the Hudson Valley to reach new patients. Westchester Medical Center, headquartered in Valhalla, in 2014 took over St. Francis Hospital in Poughkeepsie and renamed it Mid-Hudson Regional Hospital. Plus, Albany Medical Center finalized an affiliation with Columbia Memorial Hospital in Hudson in 2016, pulling Hudson Valley residents into its care network.
Health Quest, meanwhile, obtained ownership of Sharon Hospital in Western Connecticut in August while, in recent years, it spent $47 million to upgrade its Northern Dutchess Hospital in Rhinebeck and another $8 million for its Putnam Hospital Center in Carmel.
But the new Vassar Brothers pavilion is the big shot across the bow. Officials hope the $545 million project and its upgrades will stop people from heading north or south for care and instead choose Vassar. "The thing that draws people to our region ... they look at the schools and hospitals, and unequivocally, you can get the same, excellent care in Poughkeepsie that you can get in Valhalla and Albany," says Vassar Brothers President Ann McMackin. "Our mission is to provide comprehensive services here at Vassar. Anything we can do the keep people close to home, that's our goal."