Scarpino holds rendering of the Medical Pavillion
KINGSTON – Officials of Health Alliance of the Hudson Valley presented their preliminary plans for a 110,000 square foot, 201 bed medical pavilion and village, consolidating the Mary’s Avenue campus and their existing emergency department, Tuesday evening to the City of Kingston Planning Board. While the board took no action regarding approval, it does support the project, according to Chairman Wayne Platte, Jr.
This development would mark the initiation of a two-phase build, with the initial phase coming in at an approximate cost of $112 million while also including emergency department and main hospital enhancements.
Health Alliance President David Scarpino said this project will be the beginning of realizing the goals set forth by their partnership with Westchester Medical to provide better community healthcare through consolidation of existing services in one place. He said, taking for instance, the scenarios of behavioral and addiction treatment, the creation of a medical village with mental health services, along with a planned additional virtual medical village, healthcare services can be improved while being consolidated simultaneously.
“You’ll have a medical component, and a behavioral health component,” Scarpino said. “If you bring those two together, and make sure that patients seamlessly go from one to the other, surrounded by all other community service whether they be county, or they be alternative medicines, or they be healthy eating or exercising, you’ll keep people healthy and out of the hospital- out of the emergency department because when you go to the emergency department there’s no continuum of care. It’s an episodic event and it’s very costly.”
The city planning board tabled the item pending further local and state approval; however, they did pass two resolutions: that the city would be designated lead agency and that they found a negative declaration of environmental impact, freeing the project from an Environmental Impact Statement.
Health Alliance maintained they would have minimal impact, as far as construction, on their neighbors in the community citing that because they own many of the surrounding properties, they can keep disturbances to a minimum.
Although the planning board expects this to be a recurring item for the next few months, Platte said the board seems to be in support of the project.
“Without having seen any of the plans yet, it’s an important project to keep healthcare at a hospital in Kingston,” said Platte. “I think the board recognizes that; so, a preliminary overview from the board, at this time, I think we’re in support of the project.”
Health Alliance would like to break ground near the end of the second quarter of this year and finish construction in two years.
