According to the hospital’s President and CEO Mark Boucot, the projects will position Garrett County Memorial Hospital to further expand upon services and provide a higher level of health care closer to home. “This represents two milestones for Garrett County Memorial Hospital,” Boucot said in a statement. “The four-story addition and renovation project…will modernize the facility and improve the community’s access to health care.

The $23.5 million construction and renovation project includes a more than 19,000-square-foot expansion, along with improvements to one-third of the current hospital space, impacting and improving most existing patient care services. The expansion will also update and renovate a number of patient care areas such as operating and recovery rooms, the interventional radiology and vascular unit, medical and surgical units, family-centered maternity suites, the intensive care unit and individual patient rooms. This project, which is slated for completion in summer 2017, will mark the first major architectural improvement to some inpatient areas since a 1980 wing addition.

Equally important is the hospital’s newly completed Cardiac and Pulmonary Rehabilitation Center. This facility will help fill an important gap in the area, providing access to a health care service that has previously not been available to the community.

As heart and lung disease remain among the leading causes of death in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control, “cardiac and pulmonary rehabilitation programs are an invaluable way to learn how to manage chronic conditions, while also decreasing the risk of having a more severe event related to these conditions that could lead to a hospitalization,” Program Director Kendra Thayer, RN BSN added in a statement.

The cardiac rehabilitation services offered in the center are specifically designed for those living with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) and Cardiac Heart Failure (CHF) or those who have had a recent cardiac event such as a heart attack, bypass surgery, heart stents, heart valve replacements or transplant. Meanwhile, the specialized pulmonary rehabilitation service was developed for those experiencing COPD, cystic fibrosis, pulmonary hypertension, lung transplant and other chronic lung conditions.

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