[B]URLINGTON — Officials from the University of Vermont Medical Center and the city of Burlington broke ground Thursday on a new inpatient wing of the hospital and named the new building after major donors to the project.
Dr. John Brumsted, chief executive officer of the medical center, Eileen Whalen, its president, Mayor Miro Weinberger and others donned hardhats and used shovels to toss topsoil into plastic buckets to symbolize the groundbreaking.
The new wing will be called the Robert E. and Holly D. Miller Building, named for donors who gave the hospital a $13 million piece of property called Holly Court in South Burlington. The property is the biggest donation the hospital has ever received. The hospital leases out the property’s commercial building to make money.
The new inpatient wing will cost the hospital $187.3 million. About $30 million will come from private donations. It is scheduled to open in the summer of 2019.
The wing will have 128 private rooms with space for both patients and their families, an upgrade from the hospital’s current semi-private rooms, which contain two beds separated by about 3 feet and a curtain.
Brumsted called the new building long overdue and said the rooms would promote healing in a quiet, family-centered atmosphere. “I’m grateful to every single person who’s made a gift,” he said. He then introduced the Millers and unveiled a banner reading, “Thanks Bob and Holly!”
Weinberger said the building will represent an era when major institutions in the city work together rather than fight with each other. He said the medical center is providing world-class care to patients and helping the city build a world-class bicycle path with a fitness trail running beside it.
“We are, incredibly, living in a time when the hospital has chosen, and the regulators have approved, and I think the rest of us are getting used to the idea, that the hospital is becoming a major funder of initiatives … that impact so many other areas of community life,” Weinberger said.
He alluded to the hospital’s offer this year to share excess revenue with community groups. “That (Brumsted) had to fight to give away money to other partners is really quite something,” Weinberger said.
Whalen said the new private rooms will give patients the privacy they need and help families be involved in patient care. “Where else in the world would we put two strangers in a room in their most vulnerable time and have them sleep together?” she asked.
Whalen called families “an intricate part of the care delivery system” because they know the patient better than anyone else and can help communicate with doctors. She pointed to the hospital’s new mother-baby unit, which allows a woman’s significant other to stay overnight.
Brumsted, who trained as an obstetrician and gynecologist in the 1980s, said family members used to be kept out of the way but that the modern family care model is good for patients. He said his daughter had a great childbirth experience at UVM Medical Center, where his son-in-law was allowed to stay in the room with her.
“This community and this region really deserves access to state-of-the-art health care, and this facility really does that,” he said. “This is designed from what the patients and families (want) and what our community needs.”
