Courtesy / Northern Light Mercy Hospital
Charlie Therrien, president of Northern Light Mercy Hospital, said the staffing crisis in health care "is not going to go away."
Updated: December 29, 2021
In Portland, Mercy Hospital readies new emergency department amid staffing challenges
Courtesy / Northern Light Health
New emergency facilities will mean more efficient health care for patients, according to Northern Light Mercy Hospital President Charlie Therrien.
Courtesy / Northern Light Mercy Hospital
Northern Light Mercy Hospital in Portland is scheduled to open its new emergency department on Tuesday, Jan. 4.
With less than a week before Northern Light Mercy Hospital opens its new emergency department in Portland, the institution's president says the new facility will improve efficiency while the COVID surge exacerbates staffing challenges.
"The actual number of ER rooms is not changing, but it does give us much more flexibility and ability to manage patients differently than the current space," Charlie Therrien, the hospital's president, told Mainebiz by phone Tuesday after an event unveiling the new emergency care site.
The facility, equipped with 18 rooms, is due to open on Tuesday, Jan. 4, in Mercy's expanded Fore River campus to cap a consolidation project Therrien estimates to have a price tag of around $83 million.
"The rooms are all bigger, the rooms are all private with no curtains, and the flow is all much better than it was before," Therrien said.
"It gives our staff better resources to effectively manage the patients than what they've got now. It doesn't give us any more rooms, but it does give us more efficiencies from a staff and patient standpoint, and the ability to have a safer environment for our patients."
The 230-bed hospital is launching a new site at a challenging time for the health care industry. On Tuesday, there were 1,435 new COVID cases reported in Maine, after the last update on Christmas Eve, and a new U.S. daily case record over 270,000 as the delta and omicron variants of the disease converge.
Mercy's new emergency department, at 175 Fore River Parkway, features a parking lot for patients and a covered drop-off area designed for safety and convenience.
The campus consolidation, years in the making, also includes new sites for Northern Light Mercy Health Center, at 195 Fore River Parkway, and Northern Light Mercy Outpatient Specialty and Surgery Center, at 155 Fore River Parkway, and updated traffic patterns to connect the facilities.
Consigli Construction was the general contractor, while the developer was NewHeight Redfern, a joint venture between local development firms NewHeight Group and Redfern Properties.
Staffing crisis 'not going to go away'
Northern Light Mercy Hospital employs 58 nursing staff and health care providers in its emergency department. Therrien said they have all been "heroic" throughout the move, which will be completed on schedule and within budget. However, he expects staffing resources to be strained for some time as COVID cases surge.
"The staffing crisis in health care is not going to go away," he said.
Therrien said it's also hard to predict the next dip in coronavirus cases.
"We're dealing with some of the highest rates of hospitalizations and testing, and watching the new omicron variant and still learning about that," he said. "In the past we were able to watch the peaks and valleys and know when they were going to occur, but now it's almost impossible to predict when the next valley may come.
"That brings challenges, but at the end of the day we are hopeful that more and more people will get vaccinated and get boosters."
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