$41 million PVH expansion healthy and on schedule

FORT COLLINS – Poudre Valley Health System has had a heyday of construction projects in the past few years. The last of the recent wave of projects under way at Poudre Valley Hospital are progressing on schedule and will be done by early next year.

A four-story parking garage, a medical office building and a remodel of the orthopedic wing will be complete by next spring. A remodel of the hospital’s emergency room will be done by the end of this year.

The $41 million project has also included a 143-foot pedestrian bridge between the medical office building and main hospital, which was installed in September, and a remodel and expansion of the hospital’s operating rooms.

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PVH’s part of the project is $32 million, paid for by the hospital’s cash flow, said Dan Robinson, vice president for operations for the health system. The company sold bonds to construct Medical Center of the Rockies, a trauma and cardiac center that opened in Loveland in 2007.

PVHS staff are also working on a master plan to figure out which parts of the hospital need expansion or remodeling next, Robinson said. That master plan will be completed sometime in 2009.

“We are not a new hospital, and we are lucky we are able to remodel to meet patient demand,” Robinson said.

Other projects

Other recent projects within the health system include a medical office building north of Medical Center of the Rockies, set to open in December, and a remodel of the breast diagnostic center at the Harmony Campus, which had its grand opening in early November.

The medical office building across the street from PVH is being built in conjunction with the Women’s Clinic of Northern Colorado, which will ultimately own the building. The four-story, 62,000-square-foot building will include a medical spa, a sleep laboratory, a family medicine practice, the Women’s Clinic and administrative offices.

The remodel of the orthopedic wing of the hospital includes making all the patient rooms private. The unit was the last in the hospital not to offer all private rooms.

“One of our goals was to have all private rooms throughout the hospital,” Robinson said. “Private rooms are a real patient satisfier.”

The new emergency room may be where most people see the biggest improvement. The department, which has been growing at about 8 percent a year, desperately needed more space, Robinson said. The remodeling hasn’t actually added more space, but it will use existing space more efficiently, he said.

The remodel of the emergency department alone cost $2 million.

“There’s a huge difference people are feeling already,” Robinson said. “The waiting room is three times larger than it was before.”