HONESDALE, PA — Approximately 20 Wayne Memorial Hospital (WMH) administrators and board members wearing suits accessorized with white hardhats and gleaming designer pickaxes and shovels beamed as digital cameras clicked away. The occasion was a symbolic September 8 groundbreaking for the largest expansion in the hospital’s history.

The actual groundbreaking for the $41 million project, which will enlarge the existing 220,000 square foot building by 85,000 square feet, was accomplished with a nearby steam shovel. Although the project is slated for completion in spring 2019 and will take place in 21 phases, occupation of new interior spaces is expected to start as early as fall 2018, reaching full occupancy by January 2019. The project will be managed by Sordoni Construction, Inc. of Forty Fort, PA.

In addition to the creation of 50 private patient rooms, a 35,000-square-foot fifth-floor shell space will allow for improvements to several departments: oncology-chemotherapy, obstetrics, diagnostic imaging and wound care among them. And beneath that newly-created space, a covered parking lot will make for easy entrance and exit in all kinds of weather.

With the construction will come temporary inconvenience; noise, dirt, limited parking and traffic delays are expected during the 15- to 20-month construction period. Patients, visitors and staff were asked to think of it as growing pains; one year after construction is complete, WMH will celebrate its 100th anniversary.

Expansion of hospital infrastructure is one natural adjunct to exponential growth of medical staff, up from 25 physicians in 2007 to 300 today. Not a surprising statistic, considering that the hospital serves patients from Wayne and Pike counties in PA as well as sections of Sullivan and Delaware counties in NY. But a second cause for expansion is growth in breadth and depth of services offered. Within the past two years, the hospital has opened a cardiac catheterization unit, qualified as a Level IV trauma center, annexed a life-flight helipad, and become a certified primary stroke center with telemedicine capability.

Chief of Staff William R. Dewar III noted that rapidly evolving technology has spurred advances in modern medicine, making available many more lifesaving options. But he noted that it is not without limitation, and that it must never be allowed to blind healthcare practitioners to human compassion nor let them forget that every patient is somebody’s mother, father, sister, brother, husband or wife.