Northern Light Health to build new CA Dean Hospital

GREENVILLE — The location will stay the same on the Pritham Avenue campus near the shores of Moosehead Lake to serve residents and visitors to the region alike, but much of the existing Northern Light CA Dean Hospital will be replaced with new modern facilities in 2022-23. 

Primary care and select specialty care services provided in existing spaces in Greenville, Sangerville and Monson will remain.

Northern Light CA Dean Hospital and Northern Light Mayo Hospital President/Northern Light Health Senior Vice President Marie Vienneau, FACHE, said the two oldest buildings on the Greenville campus were both constructed in 1917. 

“The middle building, which is sort of the main hospital now, was built in 1967-68 and the 1983 building is what we call ‘the east building,’ which is the part we are keeping and will be renovated,” Vienneau said while sitting in her Mayo office in Dover-Foxcroft recently. 

“The rest of those buildings will be [demolished] once the new hospital is built,” she said. “It’s just a very aging facility for sure.”

Vienneau said Northern Light Health President/CEO Tim Dentry wanted the health system, which is made up of 10 hospitals and more than 100 health care facilities across Maine, to come out of the pandemic strong to “really correct some of these issues with facilities that we’ve had in these small communities for a long time.”

She said Northern Light Health officials spent last summer planning and came up with a vision that was approved by the boards of directors. “They just feel really strongly, in fact Northern Light Health is doing multiple projects,” Vienneau said, with a similar modernization project planned for Northern Light Blue Hill Hospital. “So it’s just really time to do this. We’ve talked about it enough.”

The certificate of need for Northern Light CA Dean Hospital, filed in mid-June, has the total cost at $15.5 million. “We hope that we will be able to stay in [that budget]. Again the concern is with prices being so high now we hope that will not impact our overall project costs,” Vienneau said. 

She said a new helipad will be the first thing to be built because of where it needs to go. The new building will be 11,500 square feet, with an emergency department, five acute inpatient rooms that can also be used for swing bed stays, a new diagnostic imaging department including a new CT scanner and X-ray machine, a new laboratory phlebotomy area, reception area and some staff areas, she said.

“Then there will be a connector back to what is the existing east wing, that will be renovated to have 10 nursing facility beds,” Vienneau said, as Northern Light CA Dean Hospital has a long-standing license to offer nursing care.

She said the beds, 10 in the nursing unit and five in the new hospital, will all be private rooms.

 “We’re very much looking to take lessons learned from COVID and make private rooms so you don’t have the issue any further of the roommate has something, so you catch it in the bed next door,” Vienneau said.

“If we’re going to build new and renovate we definitely want to go toward private rooms because we really see that as what’s happening in the 21st century.”

There also will be new kitchen facilities, dining room, activities room and administrative types of offices in that building. She said the project will also include a new building for EMS facilities with an ambulance garage.

“Its staging is such that we can build the new building, because it’s behind the existing buildings and move the acute services into that,” Vienneau said. “Then move the patients in the long-term care into the current building while we renovate and then move them into their new space and be able to take down the buildings that are coming down. It’s fortunate that we are not going to have to try to renovate the space that patients are in. It really couldn’t work out better as far as the staging.”

During the spring, Northern Light Health announced the first commitment to the Northern Light Health CA Hospital Project. Charlotte Allen, a long-time benefactor, had a $250,000 bequest to start the fundraising campaign.

“We are very encouraged by the initial response to philanthropy,” Vienneau said. 

Earlier in the month the hospital surpassed the halfway point in its $6.2 million “Preserving the Promise” capital campaign to support the project.

“We don’t anticipate [the coronavirus pandemic] delaying things with the project, but there is concern with materials and cost and length of time to get materials,” Vienneau said, adding those involved hope the market corrects as the work gets closer.

“We are going to be kicking off some community activities around the Fourth of July, the first of July to really try to engage the community and excite people about the project and get people engaged in the fundraising,” she said. “We really want the community to feel strongly and positively about the new hospital.”

Vienneau said a groundbreaking is planned for next April. “It puts us out to a year post that in 2023, but with the staging we will probably be in the new building somewhere in the January to February timeline but then we will have further things that need to be completed to finish it up,” she said. “So 12-18 months if everything is on time and we can get supplies.”

For information on the Northern Light CA Dean Hospital project, visit northernlight.org/CADeanPromise.