(KMZA)--Nemaha Valley Community Hospital in has announced plans to build a 22-million-dollar expansion and remodel to the current hospital.

NVCH CEO Kiley Floyd said the project will address many critical improvement areas throughout the facility.

“The constant change in the needs of our communities, standards of care, new governmental regulations, and advances in medical technology require us to continuously evaluate our services, equipment, physical plant and staff. These evaluations are essential for us to continue to provide the level of service and high quality of care our patients and their families deserve,” said Floyd. “We have a beautiful building and have been blessed to have been able to maintain the infrastructure for such a long period. However, we now need to address some critical issues and expand to meet emerging services.”

• Critical issues include but are not limited to: The Emergency Room is too small to meet the needs of today’s technological advances in addition to privacy and security concerns.
• Decontamination facilities in our ER do not meet the state or national standards.
• Updated Radiology equipment needs a much larger space to meet patient comfort and regulatory standards.
• Respiratory Therapy currently works out of an area designed to be a storage closet.
• The ability to advance technologies in our laboratory are hindered by a lack of space for additional equipment.
• Surgery staff has had to take space away from other functions to meet standards. A larger space is needed to meet regulatory demands as well as our growing surgery services.
• Patient room bathrooms are too small and could create safety issues for patients and staff.
• Many of our mechanical systems are original equipment that are over 32 years old. They have outlived their life expectancy and are not suitable for meeting regulatory demands. One way or another these will have to be replaced.

“We believe the time is now to invest in the continued success of our organization and the infrastructure needed,” said Fred Henry, NVCH Board of Trustees Chairperson. “A great hospital is essential for our personal health and the strength of our community. The hospital expansion will be paid for through community support, grants and loans from the USDA. This expansion will not result in increased property taxes.”

According to T.J. Haverkamp, Chairperson of Nemaha Valley Health Care Foundation, “We are in the early stages of a Capital Campaign to raise $2.5 million dollars to support the hospital expansion project. We will be announcing the formal kickoff of the campaign in the next few weeks. We ask everyone to support this project because it is essential to the survival of the quality health care we have come to expect at NVCH.”

CEO Floyd added, “We are currently in the design phase. We are working with HFG Architects out of Wichita. The request for proposals for a Construction Manager have been published. That award will be made by the end of October. Our timeline for construction is then dependent on a number of things including the USDA loan process. We approached this project from the standpoint of ‘here is what we need’ and ‘here is what we can afford’.

We recognize this is a long process but want to do it right the first time. It is hard not to be excited about the hospital’s growth potential and opportunities with some additional space. The key is to set this organization up for at least another 30 years of continued success.

For more information about the Hospital expansion please contact Kiley Floyd at 785-336-6181. To learn more about the upcoming Capital Campaign contact Courtney Schmelzle at 785-336-0426.