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news&Notes Bayhealth Unveils Plans for Milford Hospital
BY AMANDA HURD
In 1907, Mary Louise Donnell Marshall began her efforts to construct one of Southern Delaware’s first hospitals. During the 1912-13 General Assembly of Delaware, House Bill 194 authorized the establishment of the 12-bed Milford Emergency Hospital in downtown Milford, but the need was greater than what the hospital could provide. In the mid1930’s, a fund drive was started to build a much larger facility, and by 1938, health officials were ready to open the new 100bed Milford Memorial Hospital. Around the same time, beginning in 1921, Dr. Joseph McDaniel and Dr. I.J. MacCollum addressed Dover’s Rotary Club about the need for a hospital in Dover. The community was thrilled by the idea, and Rotarians and local leaders launched a community fund drive to raise money for the project. The Kent General Hospital in Dover opened in 1927. Since then, as part of the Bayhealth Medical Center community, several expansions and renovations have taken place to update and add to these facilities. The hospitals continually look to accommodate the increases in population, the rising number of annual hospital visits, and technological advances in the medical field. Bayhealth hopes to grow and develop quality clinical programs, facilities, practices, and strategic partnerships across the region to provide care that exceeds nationally recognized standards in a safe, patient-centered environment. With these goals in mind, this past November, state and local officials announced that Bayhealth Medical Center hopes to break ground on a new $250 million health campus along Del. 1 in Milford by the fall of 2015.
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Milford Mayor Bryan Shupe, Bayhealth President and CEO Terry Murphy, and Governor Jack Markell attended the unveiling of the hospital announcement. The new 150-acre health campus will house 163 single-patient rooms, increased physician and out-patient services, and expanded diagnostic testing. Though the hospital is not increasing its bed count, Bayhealth CEO Terry Murphy is not worried about overcrowding. Preliminary designs envision the hospital with seven stories and floors that could be re-purposed to handle an influx of patients. Terry Murphy, CEO of Bayhealth, said in a formal statement, “Many services that used to be provided in a hospital are now often delivered in an outpatient setting. With a health campus model, our patients will have access to physician offices and expansive diagnostic testing on the same site as the new hospital. The location and expansion of services really means more convenient access to comprehensive, higher quality and better coordinated care for many decades to come.” Plans for the new campus springboarded off a 2012 University of Delaware study titled “Planning for
Complete Communities in Delaware,” which looked at how communities can thrive with changing population and infrastructure. The report touched on revitalizing Milford’s downtown area and changes to address the growing aging population. Population experts estimate that by 2030, the elderly population in Sussex County will double, and the new hospital would be able to accommodate the need for additional geriatric physicians and more specialty programs tailored to the Medicare-ready population. Originally pegged as a replacement project, with new construction completely replacing Bayhealth’s current 22-acre Milford Memorial Hospital campus on Clarke Avenue in downtown Milford, engineers and hospital officials later determined that a new health campus along Del. 1 would better foster growth of the hospital, as well as growth in the community. “The existing 22-acre hospital location simply did not have the land needed for a health campus designed to serve the com-
Marc h / Ap r i l 2 0 1 5 | DELAWARE BUSINESS
3/11/15 2:05 PM