The Middlebury Campus

Issue date: 2/17/05 Section: Local News

Media Credit: Ari Joseph Citing insufficient space and lack of privacy, Porter Medical Center officials have proposed a renovation. [Click to enlarge]

Porter Medical Center made a proposal last week that would expand the hospital in a plan deemed the "North Project." The renovation would add 26,179 square feet to the surgical and maternity wings of the hospital.

Officials from the hospital presented their case to the Public Oversight Commission (POC) last week, which will convene at another meeting on March 9 to vote. If it passes through the POC members, the commissioner of the Department of Banking, Insurance, Securities and Health Care Administration will have until May 9 to decide if he will grant Porter the Certificate of Need (CON) application. The project would cost approximately $16.4 million and is scheduled to take about 16 months to complete.

Porter Medical Center Vice President for Public Relations Ron Hallman explained, "The project has been in the planning stages since the late 1990s - including a $4 million capital campaign in 2001-2002. We submitted our CON application in May 2004 and expect to have a ruling from the State by May of this year."

The CON application summarizes the proposed plan and gives a lengthy description of all the major and minor details of the project. The areas of the hospital most in need of renovation are the operating rooms and the maternity wing. According to the CON, "The current operation room environment was constructed in 1975 to support two surgeons and one obstetrician/gynecologist. Today, there are 20 surgeons with operating privileges who perform procedures at Porter. The suite consists of two operation rooms that lack adequate electrical outlets, have insufficient power supplies for the equipment and have a roof that has had a history of leaking." The description goes on to delineate the inadequacies of the space and the areas most in need of improvement.

The maternity wing, especially, is lacking in updated resources, space and privacy. The current birthing center at Porter consists of two labor rooms, one delivery room, one nursery, two postpartum rooms and two semi-private postpartum rooms. The CON application described the lack of space and the dissatisfaction of patients who are frustrated with constantly having to relocate within the hospital. According to the text, this "location is neither quiet nor private for the mother. The small room sizes, together with the fact that there are no windows, contribute to a patient care environment that fails to meet current expectations or health care architectural standards for patient care."

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