St. Vincent’s Hospital broke ground last week for the new Rudolph W. Giuliani Trauma Center, a $25 million expansion that will double the size of the hospital’s emergency room in the Village and create the first trauma center in the city to incorporate lessons learned after the World Trade Center attack.
Former Mayor Giuliani and his wife, Judith, were on hand at the Sept. 1 event along with Mayor Bloomberg and U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson. The former mayor is executive honorary chairperson of the St. Vincent’s Catholic Medical Centers capital campaign.
The construction will expand the current 10,000-sq.-ft. emergency room to a 21,000-sq.-ft. center able to respond to everyday emergencies as well as large-scale disasters and mass-casualty events.
The new center will have a redesigned waiting room, triage and registration areas, dedicated pediatric emergency, urgent care and intensive trauma units and a psychiatric treatment area. The furniture designer Maurice Villency is contributing furniture and design work for the new waiting room.
The center will be equipped with a computerized axial tomography (CAT) scanner and improved radiology services to minimize patient transfer, and will have bedside access to radiological images and electronic medical records. High-capacity decontamination facilities will be installed with the ability to create positive or negative pressure rooms to isolate patients exposed to a biological or chemical agent or ill with a communicable disease.
The expansion and renovation is expected to take three years to complete. In addition to the major center in the Village on Seventh Ave. between 11th and 13th Sts., St. Vincent’s includes St. Clare’s Hospital on the west side of Midtown. The entire St. Vincent’s Catholic Medical Centers system also includes six other hospitals in Queens, Brooklyn, Staten Island and Westchester.
