Hospital breaks ground on expansion

Hamilton Family Health Center will offer more services, physician choice

Family Health Center to offer more services, choice of physician once completed.

HAMILTON, N.Y. >> On Tuesday, Oct. 2, Community Memorial held a breaking ground ceremony for the expansion and renovation project of the Hamilton Family Health Center, located at 164 Broad St.

The “Building for the Future” project is scheduled for completion in the summer of 2019 and will provide convenient, one-stop primary and secondary specialty care for residents in the Madison County area.

The groundbreaking took place in front of the Hamilton Family Health Center entrance. Participants included President and CEO Sean Fadale; Village of Hamilton Mayor Ruthann Loveless; Master of Ceremonies Dr. Robert Delorme; Dr. Seth Kronenberg, COO & CMO from Crouse Health; and CMH Foundation Board Chair, Julie Rubenstein.

“At Community Memorial, we continuously evaluate the needs for providing high quality outpatient services for our region,”

Fadale. “We recognized two critical necessities; primary care physicians and the physical space to house these providers. What we have found is that our current lack of ‘space’ made recruitment of physicians challenging. Currently, the Hamilton Family Health Center is at capacity with 11 providers and is frequently limited by the number of exam rooms available. So when looking at the opportunity to expand and renovate the hospital, we had to take into consideration the Family Health Center, which quickly became our priority.”

The new 5,000 square foot expansion and renovation project will be designed for seamless primary and specialty care under one roof. The project is earmarked by an enlarged patient waiting area and the addition of 20 – 25 new exam rooms that will maximize health outcomes and keep care local.

Construction will begin this month, with interior and layout work expected to take place during the winter and spring. The hospital hopes to complete the project by the summer of 2019.

“During the course of construction we ask our patients to bear with us as we undertake the Family Health Center transformation,” Fadale said. “For a few short months, our waiting room will get smaller before it is expanded and certain sections of our building will be temporarily unavailable. All of those minor inconveniences will result in space for at least three additional primary care physicians and two to three specialty offices, like urology and OB GYN.”