Orange Regional Medical Center highlights new hospital plans in Town of Wallkill

Goshen —Orange Regional Medical Center officials recently reviewed the progress the hospital has made toward the planning of a new, 374-bed hospital in the Town of Wallkill. Arden Hill Hospital, in Goshen, and Horton Medical Center, in Middletown, merged in 2002 to become Orange Regional Medical Center. Since the merger, the hospital has focused on consolidating existing resources, eliminating redundancies, expanding the depth and breadth of services, improving access to necessary services and ultimately elevating the quality of health care services in the region. The hospital has been successful in its efforts thus far, but has been constrained by the age and physical limitations of existing facilities. Therefore, a decision was made to consolidate the two campuses onto a single site in a new replacement hospital. Over the past two years, several key steps have been accomplished, but there are many steps that have yet to be taken, toward the goal of building the region’s newest hospital in decades. These include: approval from the New York State Department of Health for the recently filed Certificate of Need application; completion of the State Environmental Quality Review process; local site plan approval; finalization of the project financing; operational design and development input from internal user groups of hospital staff & physicians; launching of a capital campaign; and assessment of alternative uses for the two existing campuses. The plan is to take the best of the Arden Hill and Horton campuses. At this stage, the plans for 374 beds would make it the largest hospital between the Tappan Zee Bridge and Albany. Total project costs are estimated at $372 million. When the new hospital is built, hospital officials plan to close and sell the two existing inpatient campuses. Interest has been expressed by several long-term care and senior living providers and educational institutions.