PORTLAND, Maine (NEWS CENTER) – Maine’s largest hospital will be getting even bigger.
This morning Maine Medical Center officials announced a major expansion at a cost of $512M. A major goal of the expansion is to help patients, especially those with serious illnesses, to feel more comfortable.
One thing people will notice on the outside will be the main entrance. Right now it is located up off Bramhall Street. The new entrance will be moved down onto to Congress Street and will feature a huge glass panel building.
In all the project will add 300,000 square feet to the Maine Med campus. That’s an addition of about 25-percent.
128 new patient rooms, that will be part of the expansion, will be single patient. That will give patients more privacy and will use existing space in the hospital more efficiently. Sometimes single patients must take up double rooms because of their illness.
“Many, if not most of our patients, are too sick to have a roommate, yet a majority of our patient rooms are double occupancy. Every day we have to shut down patient beds and double rooms to accommodate these needs”, said Maine Medical President and CEO Rich Petersen.
Half of the $512M for the project will come from the hospitals' reserves and donations. The other half will come from borrowing. That will result in an increase in costs to the patients.
“We don’t think that it will be so significant in nature that it would cause a spike in health care costs,” said Petersen.
With low-interest borrowing rates right now, hospitals officials say the increase to patient costs could be as low as about 1-percent.