Erie County Medical Center (ECMC) Corporation has recently been awarded $10 million from the New York State Department of Health’s Statewide Health Care Facility Transformation Program (SHCFTP) for the institution’s future Key Bank Trauma and Emergency Department.
The state program is designed to “improve patient care through the development of high-quality medical facilities and programs serving the inpatient, primary care, mental health, substance use disorder and long-term care needs of communities throughout the State.”
ECMC broke ground on the $55 million facility in June 2018 and it is expected to be completed in May 2020. A combination of public funding, private funding, and hospital equity and financing is being utilized to complete the project.
The facility is the designated mass casualty trauma center for Western New York. It nearly doubles facility square footage to 54,000 sq. ft.and will increase treatment space from 36 to 54 stations including four dedicated trauma rooms, two behavioral health safe rooms, two isolation rooms, and four medical resuscitation rooms. It features intradepartmental imaging consisting of two CT rooms and two X-ray rooms, direct access from the hospital’s rooftop helipad, and a care initiation zone to support an enhanced triage model of care.
“ECMC is deeply appreciative to Gov. Cuomo, his administration and the NYS Department of Health for this very important funding, which will support the dedicated clinicians who everyday save lives in our Key Bank Trauma and Emergency Department and, of course, the tens of thousands of patients they serve annually,” said ECMCC President and CEO Thomas J. Quatroche Jr., Ph.D. “We are also very thankful for the strong support ECMC received from the members of our Western New York state legislative delegation, especially NYS Assembly Majority Leader Crystal Peoples-Stokes and NYS Sen. Tim Kennedy. They made this critically important funding a priority of the delegation and they advocated tirelessly for ECMC. Our Great Lakes Health partners at Kaleida Health and the University at Buffalo were equally important in reinforcing ECMC’s need for this level of funding to support our lifesaving care for all Western New Yorkers.”