Jim Fair
A $23.9 million, three-story expansion at the Pelham Medical Center is scheduled to begin late this year.
Jim Fair
The Pelham Medical Center was rebranded by the Spartanburg Regional Healthcare System in March 2014.
The $23.9 million construction on the east side, back of the hospital, will total 54,800 square feet, with 28,000 square feet to be renovated within the project expansion, GreerToday.com has learned.
“Two years ago we started the process, the master facilities plan, which is not only for here but for our whole system,” Tony Kouskolekas, President of Pelham Medical Center, said. “We looked at our current space needs, age of the space and future volumes built around population growth or reduction, in this case area anticipated growth.
“We are almost doubling the capacity of the emergency room. We’re going to expand the lab and imaging areas to support the ER as well.”
Expanded emergency services will include 13 additional exam rooms and related support for a total of 25 exam rooms. The emergency department will have a trauma room with six rapid treatment bays. The ER entrance will not be restructured.
The surgical services department will increase the number of post anesthesia care unit bays and prep/recovery rooms for surgical patients. Surgical support areas, such as the sterile processing department, will be expanded.
“You plan for the future, current use and the future together, and determine how many CT scans you may need, how many operating rooms, and then you have to build the support space around that,” Kouskolekas said.
“From the very beginning Spartanburg Regional and now Pelham Medical Center had a plan on how they would develop their site in conjunction with the way our community is growing,” Reno Deaton, President of Greer Development Corporation, said. “With that growth in our community it has given them the comfort and the confidence to continue on in their growth plans. “
Construction is targeted to begin late this year with the expansion completed in the fourth quarter of 2017.
No additional operating rooms or inpatient beds are planned in this expansion. Space will be available for two future operating rooms.
“We have three operating rooms today and the expansion will enable us to do a couple of things, chief being to expand our sterile processing area so there’s a reprocessing of the equipment that goes on between surgeries,” Kouskolekas said. “As we’ve grown we need more space to not only process equipment but to store it and consolidate our prep and recovery activities that go on for surgeries.”
Discussions are ongoing whether to consolidate imaging services. “Today we do imaging services over here and primarily serve the patients upstairs in the ER,” Kouskolekas said. “We also have outpatient imaging across the street (medical offices).
"One of the things we talked about just corporately and with our imaging folks, how can we be just as efficient and still deliver great services. So one idea is to try to bring all the imaging services all together. As we talked through it, there will be some ability to consolidate our services so we can do inpatient and outpatient and emergency patients in one area with multiple pieces of equipment modality. But there are some things we do enough volume of that we’re going to need some outpatient redundancy there. Our MRI will be attached to the hospital.”
Staffing has been discussed and will be increased based on patient demand more than expansion, Kouskolekas said. “If we continue to grow, not will we only grow in space we will have to have more staff.”
Roads and infrastructure entering the hospital will also have some work. “One plan is to push Westmoreland Road out further toward the property line closest to I-85,” Kouskolekas said. That will create a straighter road, allow for more buildings and provide additional parking. The expansion will also result in additional parking.
There has been a flurry of activity since the Spartanburg Regional Healthcare System rebranded the Greer campus of the Pelham Medical Center last March. The Gibbs Cancer Center also expanded with its second accelerator, the state-of-the-art Cyberknife, that became operational in January. Jimmy Gibbs, with his wife, Marsha, also described their vision of a 6-to-10 story Gibbs Cancer Center & Research Institute at Pelham as the next phase to the medical complex across from the hospital.
“I think whenever we talk about a community asset like Pelham Medical Center and its growth, it can do nothing but encourage additional complementary services to locate in Greer and nearby,” said Deaton. “ The news today is great news not only for Pelham Medical Center, not only for Greer but for everybody in our area.”