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Cooley Dickinson Receives $100,000 from Greenfield Co-op

By Contributor
Banking and Financial Services

Kicking Off a Campaign

 

Cooley Dickinson Hospital announced last week that it has received a $100,000 gift from Greenfield Cooperative Bank to support the expansion and renovation of its 50-year-old Emergency Department. The bank’s donation also serves as the kickoff gift for a $1,000,000 challenge opportunity.

“This incredibly generous gift in support of the Emergency Department is an investment in our shared commitment to a healthy Pioneer Valley,” said Dr. Lynnette Watkins, president and chief operating officer of Cooley Dickinson Health Care. “We are honored and grateful to Greenfield Cooperative Bank for this gift of support, which will benefit their customers, our patients, and our collective communities by providing access to the region’s top providers and leading healthcare services in a newly renovated and expanded Emergency Department.”

The gift will support the $26 million expansion, reconfiguration, and renovation effort to allow Cooley Dickinson to meet the ever-evolving emergency-medicine needs of the community it serves. To accomplish this goal, the hospital has embarked on an ambitious and comprehensive fundraising campaign, with nearly $7.2 million has been raised to date.

“Cooley Dickinson Hospital is a vital part of the health of our neighbors in the Valley,” said Tony Worden, president and CEO of Greenfield Cooperative Bank. “This donation is a way for us to show our support for the hospital and the people it serves. Many of our staff, family, and friends have needed to receive care at the Emergency Department. We are grateful for the work that the hospital does, and we are thrilled to help them continue their mission.”

Worden added that “Greenfield Cooperative Bank is committed to giving back to the community, and we believe that supporting our local hospital is one of the best ways to do that. We are proud to be a part of this community, and we want to do our part to make it a healthier place.”

Diane Dukette, Cooley Dickinson’s chief Development officer, noted that the generosity of Greenfield Cooperative Bank will have a transformational impact as the kickoff gift for the $1 million Harold Grinspoon Foundation Challenge, which launched on Sept. 1.

Through Aug. 31, 2024, she noted, every new cash donation to Transforming Emergency Care: The Campaign for the Cooley Dickinson Emergency Department will be matched 50%, up to $1 million, by the Harold Grinspoon Charitable Foundation. “When successful, that means that we will raise up to an additional $2 million for this campaign.”

Cooley Dickinson is expected to serve 40,000 Emergency Department patients this year. That care will be provided in a 1970s-era building that was designed for 17,000 patients annually and is currently 40% undersized. A shortage of space means some patients are treated in hallways. The Emergency Department also needs to expand its services to care for an aging population (triple what it was just 10 years ago). In addition, the expansion will provide additional beds for people experiencing mental-health emergencies.

The two-year project calls for adding 6,600 square feet of space, including nine new patient rooms; eight behavioral-health beds, which can ‘flex’ as patient needs arise; and a family waiting area. In addition, a computerized tomography (CT) scanning machine, which provides timely access to diagnostic imaging, will be added to the Emergency Department.

“This campaign is critical to the health of our community,” Dukette said. “In the newly renovated Emergency Department, patients will see a nurse when they arrive, they will be treated in single patient rooms that allow for privacy, and a central nurses’ station means our clinicians can respond better to patient needs. Overall, this is about making the Emergency Department as efficient and up-to-date as possible to enable our talented providers to take the best possible care of their patients. We are so truly grateful for Greenfield Cooperative Bank for stepping forward and supporting Cooley Dickinson Hospital so generously.”

bankESB Makes $500,000 Challenge Grant to Cooley Dickinson 

By
Daily News

EASTHAMPTON — Matthew Sosik, president and CEO of bankESB, announced that the bank has made a $500,000 challenge grant to support the Emergency Department at Cooley Dickinson Hospital. The funds will be used to support Transforming Emergency Care: Campaign for the Cooley Dickinson Emergency Department, a $19.76 million expansion, reconfiguration, and renovation effort to allow Cooley Dickinson to meet the ever-evolving emergency medicine needs of all members of the community, from infants to older adults. 

“Access to quality medical care is something we all count on, and Cooley Dickinson continues to do an amazing job treating our friends, family, and neighbors who live and work in our communities,” said Sosik. “bankESB is pleased to do its part in supporting Cooley Dickinson and its efforts to transform its Emergency Department into one that’s as up-to-date as possible and can unlock its full potential. We hope others will do the same.”   

According to Cooley Dickinson Hospital, its Emergency Department is 40% undersized to meet the community’s needs and cares for many patients who require critical medical attention. The number of patients visiting the department has doubled — from 17,000 in the 1970s to nearly 34,000 in recent years. Renovations are expected to break ground next spring. 

Organizations contributing to the Campaign for the Cooley Dickinson Emergency Department can increase the impact of their donations through this matching grant. bankESB will give one dollar for every two dollars donated to the Emergency Department campaign through Dec. 31, up to $500,000.  

  

“The Emergency Department is in essence our front door and often patients and their families who come in for care are at their most vulnerable,” said Dr. Lynnette Watkins, president and CEO of Cooley Dickinson Health Care. “It’s important for us to provide a safe, warm, welcoming environment to every patient, and this campaign will help ensure that we can. 

“We rely on great community partners, like bankESB, who give so generously in support of the care that we provide every day,” she went on. “This challenge grant is a wonderful opportunity for you to make a gift that has an even greater impact because of bankESB’s generosity.  I encourage everyone to help us meet this challenge.  And know that your gift supports the care that is provided here, in your community.” 

The challenge grant was made as part of the bank’s charitable giving program, The Giving Tree, which reflects the roots the bank has in its communities, its commitment to making a real difference in the neighborhoods it serves, and the belief that everyone’s quality of life is enhanced when we work together to solve our communities’ biggest problems. With this donation, the bank will have given more than $1 million to Cooley Dickinson over the past decade to help support the hospital’s expanded care, including a new unified cancer center, The Breast Center, and other initiatives. 

Contributions may be sent to the Cooley Dickinson Hospital Development Office, P.O. Box 329, Northampton, MA  01061-0329 or made on the organization’s website at cooleydickinson.org/giving.  

The $19.76 million Emergency Department expansion, reconfiguration, and renovation will allow Cooley Dickinson to meet the ever-evolving emergency medical needs of all members of the community, from infants to elders. The current Emergency Department was not designed to face the challenges of the 21st century; this campaign will help to create safe, warm spaces in which to deliver the highest quality of specialized care for the increasing number of patients who turn to Cooley Dickinson every year.  The groundbreaking for the Emergency Department renovations is expected to begin Spring 2023. To make a gift in support of the campaign, and to help Cooley Dickinson reach the bankESB gift challenge before Dec. 31, visit www.cooleydickinson.org/giving.  

CDH’s ER Expansion, Renovation Is Just What the Doctor Ordered

By Contributor
Business of Aging

Room for Improvement

By Elizabeth Sears

 

Cooley Dickinson has a vintage 1973 Emergency Department — functioning well beyond its expected lifespan.

Even though this older facility has been a workhorse through the pandemic, helping support its community through what is now four waves of COVID-19, it has some obvious bottlenecks. Due to a constriction of space, those at Cooley Dickinson have found themselves getting creative, using hall beds in order to get by. However, an intriguing, $15.5 million solution is currently in the works for 2023.

The plan, “Transforming Emergency Care: Campaign for the Cooley Dickinson Emergency Department,” will include the renovation of 17,000 square feet, plus a 6,600-square-foot expansion. In 2019, Cooley Dickinson completed a master plan for facilities, and the Emergency Department was identified as an area greatly in need of expansion and and renovation.

“We looked at the entire institution, and the Emergency Department emerged as the number-one priority,” said Diane Dukette, chief Development officer at Cooley Dickinson. “Then came the pandemic, and that only further heightened that need we had to take over the endoscopy space to create a specialized respiratory Emergency Department.”

This project was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic; the initial plan was to start in 2020. However, this has allowed for plenty of time to plan, and those at Cooley Dickinson are feeling optimistic about the current timeline.

Diane Dukette

“We looked at the entire institution, and the Emergency Department emerged as the number-one priority.”

“The more planning you put into this, the better your construction phase is going to be, so we plan to really work with Consigli, our construction manager, to roll out a good phased-construction plan so it goes smoothly,” said Dr. Robert Redwood, an emergency-medicine specialist at the hospital.

Since this project is occurring in an endemic-COVID world, the plan is incorporating HVAC needs like filters and negative airflow throughout the Emergency Department. This will be essential for taking care of patients during an ongoing respiratory pandemic, Redwood said.

The ED expansion and renovation project continues to be the top priority of the organization. The Emergency Department is roughly 40% undersized right now for the population it serves, and that figure does not take into account the Pioneer Valley’s constantly growing population.

Due to the current space limitations in the existing ED, Cooley Dickinson’s staff strategically makes decisions every day about where to put patients. This is not ideal for anyone, but the staff is doing everything they can to ensure patient care, Dukette said.

“Our staff are spending more time doing workarounds and showing up and providing exceptional care in this space,” she told BusinessWest, adding that more space will allow them to do their jobs more efficiently.

Redwood spoke of the ‘triple aim’ in healthcare, which focuses on better outcomes, population health, and patient satisfaction. Now, there’s been considerable interest in a ‘quadruple aim.’ The Institute for Health Improvement has developed a four-part framework which includes care for the care team — something that has been key during this pandemic, he said. This factor will certainly be reflected in the upcoming project.

Dr. Robert Redwood

“We are sort of in the midst of a burnout epidemic as well during the COVID epidemic, and we want our facilities to be a place where staff feel proud to work and are able to take care of patients but also take care of themselves.”

“There’s going to be good lighting for the staff, staff respite areas and we’ll really try to take care of the people providing the care as well,” he said. “We are sort of in the midst of a burnout epidemic as well during the COVID epidemic, and we want our facilities to be a place where staff feel proud to work and are able to take care of patients but also take care of themselves.”

 

Space Exploration

It has been firmly established that crowding in emergency departments leads to poor outcomes, which is especially evident from the ED crowding that has been seen across the nation due to COVID-19. This has only emphasized the importance of streamlined processes where medical professionals can move their patient population through their space and get the emergencies diagnosed and stabilized in a rapid fashion, Redwood said.

“There are time-sensitive drugs,” he explained. “If you come to the emergency department with a stroke, my goal is to get you tPA — it’s called alteplase — within 60 minutes, and a key step there is getting this CT scan in a timely fashion, so the closer the CT is, when it’s co-located in the department, the quicker you can do those critical-care pathways.”

Another focus of this renovation project is creating a more geriatric-friendly facility. This includes features like large hallways, accessible bathrooms, nutrition stations, mobility aids, good acoustics, good signage, and bright lighting.

“These sound like no-brainers now, but they’re really not no-brainers,” Redwood explained. “You have to build it, you have to design it, elegantly. When patients come into the ED with dementia, they can easily have sensory overload, and then have behavioral changes due to sensory overload, so you want to have an environment that supports care for patients with dementia.”

Cooley Dickinson’s Emergency Department has received geriatric emergency department accreditation by the American College of Emergency Physicians, making it a pioneer within its larger healthcare system, Mass General Brigham. Indeed, it is the first hospital within the 13-hospital system to receive that accreditation. Other facilities in the system are going to follow suit, Redwood noted.

Another improvement to be included in this project is a larger behavioral-health pod, the need for which has only been exacerbated by two years of pandemic.

The phenomenon has been referred to as the “syndemic” — the COVID-19 pandemic plus a mental-health epidemic. Many of the support structures people have for their mental-health needs are lacking, Redwood explained, calling for improvements in behavioral-health resources.

“We’re going to have a dedicated behavioral health pod,” he said. “The current pod for behavioral health has four beds, and, for example, we have pediatric psych warding as a challenge in Massachusetts. We have two patients who have been there for well over a month in the pod, so those are beds that aren’t turning over, they aren’t readily usable. An expanded behavioral-health pod will be just really beneficial for the community.”

As noted, the price tag for the project is $15.5 million. Dr. Lynnette Watkins, president of Cooley Dickinson Health Care, recently announced a $1 million gift given by John and Elizabeth Armstrong of Amherst to contribute to the project. Additional fundraising efforts have been launched in these early stages of the project.

“What’s particularly exciting is that we had a group of individuals that came together to help us get this launched and gave us collectively a million-dollar challenge: to raise a million dollars by March 1, and then they’ll give us another million dollars,” Dukette said.

In regard to that $1 million goal, Cooley Dickinson has $117,000 left to raise over the next two weeks before it can garner the matching $1 million. Toward the end of the year, the hospital anticipates reaching out to the community for fundraising, which will coincide with when construction starts.

“This is a project that truly touches everyone in our community, and the club is honored to support the hospital,” said Steve Roberts, 2021-22 president of the Northampton Rotary Club, on the club’s recent $5,000 gift to the campaign.

 

Bottom Line

Redwood emphasized that, at the end of the day, what the Cooley Dickinson Emergency Department really needs is real estate.

“We need physical beds, and having an expanded footprint will allow us to really meet our community’s needs,” he said. “So we’re building an ED for 40,000 to 48,000 ED visits per year. Right now we’re around 32,000 to 34,000 visits per year, but the Valley is a popular place, it’s only growing, and we know we’re going to need that capacity.”

Both Redwood and Dukette enthusiastically stressed that this project is essential for the well-being of their community.

“We’re extremely proud of the fact that we are very inclusive, and we do everything we can to make whoever shows up in our emergency room feel welcomed and cared for,” Dukette said. “We’re a team.”

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