Our client, a small community hospital in New England, went into bankruptcy earlier this year before being acquired by a larger regional health system in the closest city. As part of this transaction, Stroudwater worked on behalf of the state’s Hospital Association to evaluate the market demand, and eventually determined that the volumes were no longer sufficient to justify acute inpatient services; we encouraged the regional system to pursue an aggressive outpatient and prevention/wellness strategy. We were hired to explore the opportunities and how these services might integrate into the region’s overall population management initiatives.
Our challenge for the future of the small hospital was to reimagine the former inpatient campus as an ambulatory campus; how to improve the existing, fragmented public circulation, how best to use the space, what services to include, could we consolidate existing leased space on campus, could we remove outdated buildings, how much might these renovations cost, and how might they be phased.
The planning team presented three options for the internal reconfiguration of space and services. The preferred option included developing an integrated community wellness and education center; expanding the emergency department to include treatment spaces for observation and infusion patients (also relocated the ambulance drop-off from the front of the building to the back); creating a new, clear public wayfinding sequence, reducing from three separate entrances to one; consolidating ambulatory surgery and endoscopy prep/recovery (moved CPD adjacent to ORs for more efficient flow); and “landbanking” space for 20 inpatient beds in the event that they could come back on site at some future date.