Kettering Health Network, on Tuesday, broke ground on a $25 million expansion of Grandview Hospital. Officials with the nonprofit health network say the expansion will add space and double the hospital’s emergency rooms and services. Those added services could help residents affected by the closure of nearby Good Samaritan Hospital.
Kettering Health Network president Roy Chew says the decision to expand is a direct result of Premier Health Network’s decision to close Good Samaritan Hospital later this year.
“If we don’t do anything, we’re either being foolish or we’re being cold-hearted because there’s going to be patients from that area who seek care at our hospital. We are now the only hospital left in Dayton city limits of West Dayton,” he said.
Last year, Grandview saw about 37,000 emergency room visits. With the expansion officials say they could double that number.
Yet, Chew says, even with the expansion they likely won’t be able to cover all of the residents affected by Good Sam’s closing. It’s been reported Good Sam handles nearly 80,000 emergency visits a year.
Premier Health announced in January it would close Good Sam and move its services and personnel to Miami Valley. Since the announcement, many west side residents have expressed concern about the loss of neighborhood health services.
Still, the expansion should help allay fears about Good Sam's closure and the availability of nearby health services for residents. Five Rivers Health Centers also recently announced that they hope to expand services in the area as well.
According to Chew, once they heard the news that Good Sam would be closed, KHN officials scrambled to come up with a plan. In just five weeks, renovation and expansion plans were completed and KHN is wasting no time in implementing them.
"There is no time," said Chew, when asked about a capital campaign to raise funds for the expansion. Instead he says the money will be culled from the other hospitals within their network. He says KHN officials have had to reconfigure the annual funding allocation to the other facilities to make the expansion happen, though funding help from outside sources were still possible.