Hartford HealthCare eyes $14.25M investment to add operating rooms at St. Vincent’s

Hartford Business Journal – Thursday, December 19, 2024
By David Krechevsky

Hartford HealthCare has applied to the state for approval to add three operating rooms at St. Vincent’s Medical Center in Bridgeport.

The Certificate of Need application was filed in October. It states that while St. Vincent’s, located at 2800 Main St., is authorized to have 17 operating rooms on its main campus, it currently has only 15.

The application states that, following an infrastructure analysis, it is seeking to increase the number of authorized operating rooms to 20, three more than currently authorized by the state.

HHC states that the hospital had planned to begin construction of two additional operating rooms, but that project was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Following the end of the pandemic, St. Vincent’s completed a master facility plan to update its facilities and infrastructure, including modernizing and upgrading its operating rooms, the application states.

The MFP proposes redesigning and building out the main operating room corridor at St. Vincent’s to bring the total number of operating rooms in use to 20, three more than currently authorized. The cost of the project is projected at $14.25 million.

HHC said the master facility plan will guide the construction of five additional modern operating rooms “as a complement to the hospital’s existing ORs, allowing for the much needed flexibility for emergent trauma or other emergent add-on cases without causing significant delays for scheduled patients.”

Hospital officials say five of the hospital’s 15 operating rooms are too small to accommodate the equipment needed for complex orthopedic, thoracic and vascular surgical cases.

“The (master facility plan) will repurpose and ‘right-size’ these five ORs,” allowing the hospital to accommodate more complex surgical procedures and provide greater flexibility to efficiently use the existing ORs, the application states.

It adds that the volume of surgeries at the hospital has grown by 635 cases, or 9.4%, from fiscal year 2022 to fiscal 2023, and by 388 cases, or 5.3%, from fiscal 2023 to fiscal 2024.

In an emailed statement about the application, a Hartford Healthcare spokesperson said the health system “continually explores how to best serve the community and to meet growing demand. We are so proud that more and more people choose to have their care at St. Vincent’s Medical Center, once again rated ‘A’ for Quality & Safety by the Leapfrog group.”

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