Mount Desert Island Hospital, which has become busier as the local tourism industry has grown, has received state approval to pursue a $42 million expansion and renovation.
In addition to those plans, the hospital has acquired a clinic in Southwest Harbor that it plans to merge into other clinics it already owns elsewhere on MDI, hospital officials announced Tuesday.
The hospital is planning to triple the size of its Bar Harbor emergency room facilities and to make the main building more visible from Main Street. A new main entrance will be built on the building’s western facade while the parcels along Stanwood Place, which separate the structure from Main Street, will be redesigned and landscaped to make the hospital easier to find and more accessible to visitors.
“We’re still a little hidden back there,” Mariah Cormier, the hospital’s spokesperson, said about its campus, which officially has an address of 10 Wayman Ln.
Cormier said the hospital serves residents from MDI and beyond, but also provides treatment to many visitors from elsewhere including from out of state because of the number of tourists who visit the island and Acadia National Park in the summer and fall. Many of those patients, she said, come to the hospital in private vehicles, rather than by ambulance, and so have to find it on their own.
Bar Harbor can be congested in the summer, she said, so making the hospital easier to find and access should translate to better overall patient care.
“Already, navigating downtown Bar Harbor isn’t easy,” Cormier said.
The volume of non-local patients has grown over the years, which is why a big part of the project is renovating and expanding the ER, she said. Those improvements will include safety and accessibility upgrades to its entrance.
The hospital first announced its plans to make major design changes to its main building in 2021, but was required to get approval from the Maine Department of Health of Human Services before it could proceed with the project. That approval, in the form of a certificate of need, was granted by the state on Nov. 21.
“Securing the Certificate of Need approval marks a pivotal moment for Mount Desert Island Hospital,” said Chrissi Maguire, the hospital’s president and CEO. “This decision enables us to move forward with critical expansion projects that will strengthen our ability to provide high-quality, patient-centered care for our community.”
Hospital officials are planning to hold a community forum at 5:30 p.m. Thursday at Jesup Memorial Library on Cottage Street, which also will be streamed online via Zoom, to provide information about its plans and get feedback from the public.
The acquisition of Acadia Family Center, a private clinic on Fernald Point Road in Southwest Harbor, factors into the hospital’s physical reorganization plans, Cormier said.
Because it is classified as a critical access hospital, it is limited in how many separate health centers it can operate, she said. For that reason it will move medical services currently offered at Acadia Family Center to clinics it already owns and operates elsewhere in Southwest Harbor and Northeast Harbor, but it will move other functions to the Fernald Point Road property.
The hospital’s advancement and human resources departments will move into the newly acquired Southwest Harbor property, which also will be used for community engagement events and programs, Cormier said.
“There will be a lot of administrative functions over there,” she said.
Besides the acquisition of Acadia Family Center and the expansion and reorientation of its main building, the hospital has had other projects in the works. It is nearing completion of upgrading its energy systems for its main Bar Harbor building, and recently completed construction of its Kogod Center for Medical Education, which provides housing and classroom space for medical students who come to Bar Harbor to learn about rural medicine.
State approval of a certificate of need for the hospital’s planned $42 million in upgrades was required only for the anticipated main building expansion, not the other projects, Cormier said.
