After months of hard work, North Shore Community Health recently gave a tour of the Peabody Family Health Expansion Project to state and local officials to show the progress that has been made with the construction. The expansion is expected to improve the center’s efficiency as well as nearly double the amount of treatment rooms.
Along with seven new treatment rooms, the project is also adding new open and collaborative workstations for administration, a new reception area, a telehealth communications room, one new procedure room, vaccine/medication fridges with tap card access, and more. This will allow us to provide better care to our patients
This expansion was made possible through a $1.3 million donation from the Executive Office of Health and Human Services capital grant program as well as a $350,000 donation from Mass General Brigham.
While the expansion has been a major ongoing project, we’ve been careful to not allow our patient volume or quality of care to drop. That’s why the construction is being done in phases, allowing exam rooms and other essential services to be temporarily relocated to another part of the building and kept online for as long as possible.
“We never want to affect our patient volumes or our patient population in any negative type of way,” says Curt Swanson, North Shore Community Health’s operations and analytics project manager.
Phase one is expected to be completed by late September. It will open up the new reception area, patient and exam rooms, and medical supply storage in the space between the Family Health Center and Family Dental Center. Phase two is slated to be wrapped up by early January, removing the wall that separates the new space and the current exam rooms, connecting the whole floor. When these phases are completed, we’ll once again look for funding to potentially start phase three. This phase would tentatively involve connecting all parts of the building by removing another wall in between the newly expanded space and the Family Dental Center, as well as add two or three new potential treatment rooms.
It’s important to us that we have the space and resources to accommodate as many patients as possible. We serve roughly 14,000 patients per year at our associated health centers in Peabody, Gloucester, and Salem, and the number keeps increasing rapidly.
“We serve people regardless of their ability to pay or their insurance,” North Shore Community Health President and CEO Margaret Brennan said. “We see a significant low-income MassHealth population, and then folks who make a little bit too much [to be eligible for] MassHealth.”
We at North Shore Community Health are proud of the progress of our expansion project and the improved quality of care we’ll be able to provide to patients.