Gouverneur Opens New Ambulatory Care Pavilion and Penthouse of New Nursing Home to Meet the Needs of Lower East Side and Chinatown
Sep 19, 2011
U.S. Congresswoman Nydia Velazquez,
Dr. Ramanathan Raju, Gouverneur
Executive Director Mendel Hagler
and State Assembly Speaker Sheldon
Silver at the ribbon-cutting.
Gouverneur Healthcare Services, a community healthcare center and nursing home of the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation (HHC), today announced the opening of its new ambulatory care pavilion and new penthouse floor of its skilled nursing facility that will add 85 nursing home beds to accommodate the growing aging population of the Lower East Side and Chinatown community. The $200 million modernization project will expand primary care and preventive health services, improve the physical and therapeutic environments, and create a larger, modern, 295-bed nursing home designed to meet the “culture change” movement in long term care with a homelike environment.
Gouverneur Executive Director Mendel Hagler; HHC Board Chairman Dr. Michael Stocker; HHC Senior Vice President Lynda Curtis; elected officials including U.S. Rep. Nydia Velazquez, State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, State Senator Daniel Squadron, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, New York City Councilwoman Rosie Mendez, City Councilwoman Margaret Chin and City Councilman Daniel Garodnick; dignitaries and local community representatives today marked the opening of the new healthcare facilities at a ribbon cutting ceremony on the Gouverneur campus on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.
“For more than a century Gouverneur Healthcare Services has taken care of the ever-changing, diverse population of New York City’s Lower East Side,” said HHC President Alan D. Aviles. “The new design and expansion, supported with state-of-the-art technology, will enable us to render even better care with a focus on safety, comfort and quality.”
“This modernization demonstrates the commitment by New York City and HHC to the mission of providing high-quality healthcare services to all New Yorkers,” Gouverneur Executive Director Hagler said. “Our patients and residents will be able to receive the best care possible in a modern, patient-centered setting, and our wonderful staff will have the best resources to provide care in a state-of-the-art facility.”
Gouverneur Healthcare Services is an ambulatory care center and a nursing facility that primarily serves the communities of the Lower East Side and Chinatown. Phase 1 of the project included the construction of a 13-story building that includes the five-story ambulatory care pavilion and an eight-story tower that rises above the pavilion to house the skilled nursing facility, with the pavilion and the 13th floor of the tower expected to open to patients in about a month. Phase 2 includes the total renovation of the existing 330,000 square foot facility, including the existing ambulatory care center and nursing facility. Patients will be moved into additional floors of the new nursing facility tower as renovation progresses in the other building. When the project is completed in two years, it will create a single, state-of-the-art, 450,000 square foot healthcare center.
The New Outpatient Pavilion – The Center for Community Health and Wellness
The fully completed healthcare center will serve almost 400,000 outpatient visits a year, a 15 percent increase in capacity. The new ambulatory care pavilion features a four-story atrium and attractive and comfortable public areas. The completed ambulatory care center will feature a 30,000-square-foot Women and Children’s Center that will span an entire floor of the two buildings combined, a dialysis center, a new CT scan area and a new ambulatory surgery center. Sweeping advances in the facility’s design and equipment will increase patient safety, enable greater efficiency, and provide state-of-the-art technology and comfortable amenities in patient care. Comprehensive services will be provided in the new ambulatory care pavilion while the other building is under renovation, including adult medicine, OB-GYN, pediatrics, behavioral health, podiatry and ophthalmology.
The New Nursing Home – The Residence at Gouverneur Court
The layout of the fully completed top floor of the nursing home demonstrates a design concept that embraces individualized, patient-centered care that departs from the institutional model of nursing home care and moves toward a more homelike environment. The penthouse floor design will be repeated in the rest of the nursing facility, with private bedrooms in single and double-room suites; large, open dining areas and cozy community spaces, some featuring fireplaces. The typical floor will be made up of four communities with 10 patients in each community, and each community will have a team of medical and social caregivers that works regularly with that community. Patients are referred by doctors at hospitals or other nursing homes and require a high level of care. The public spaces are specially designed to allow residents to host visitors, family and friends in comfortable, cheerful settings. The new design reflects Gouverneur’s goal to offer nursing home residents choices in their daily living and creates a physical environment that supports smaller communities of residents on each floor to foster relationships with other residents and the care team at Gouverneur.
The new Gouverneur Healthcare Services design reflects the character of Manhattan’s multi-cultural Lower East Side where Gouverneur is situated. Pun Yin, a Master of Fung Shui, provided consultation throughout the design process to enhance the environment through use of color and light.
The project is managed by the Dormitory Authority of the State of New York (DASNY). It was designed by RMJM architects and is constructed by the Hunter Roberts Construction Group. Construction on the site began three years ago. The project is funded by the City of New York, with additional grants from the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, Office of Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, the New York City Council and the U.S Department of Housing and Urban Development. The Gouverneur project is part of a city-wide, five-year, $824 million capital investment plan to modernize and rebuild HHC facilities and improve the quality of healthcare services for all New Yorkers.
About HHC
The New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation (HHC) is a $6.7 billion integrated healthcare delivery system with its own 420,000 member health plan, MetroPlusHealth, and is the largest municipal healthcare organization in the country. HHC serves 1.4 million New Yorkers every year and more than 475,000 are uninsured. HHC provides medical, mental health and substance abuse services through its 11 acute care hospitals, five skilled nursing facilities, six large diagnostic and treatment centers and more than 70 community based clinics. HHC Health and Home Care also provides in-home services for New Yorkers. HHC was the 2008 recipient of the National Quality Forum and The Joint Commission’s John M. Eisenberg Award for Innovation in Patient Safety and Quality. For more information, visit www.nychhc.org/hhc or find us on facebook.com/NYCHealthSystem or twitter.com/NYCHealthSystem.