The Kaleida Health Board of Directors officially approved plans to move the clinical services and programs of Millard Fillmore Gates Circle Hospital to the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus Monday night. An expanded Buffalo General Hospital will serve as Kaleida Health’s flagship site. It will have approximately 600 patient beds with 30 operating rooms and a new emergency department. Kaleida Health’s “new facility” is expected to handle 63,000 emergency room visits annually.
“We outlined a plan, a timetable and the need for funding. Our organization was willing to evolve if it meant making what we have today, even better. The Department of Health’s recent endorsement and $65 million in funding for that vision will now allow us to make reform, a reality,” said James R. Kaskie, President and CEO of Kaleida Health.
Kaskie says that includes planning for a new academically-oriented medical center on the medical campus, integrating the key programs and personnel of Buffalo General and Millard Fillmore Gates Circle Hospitals. The project is expected to exceed $100 million including a five or six-story addition to the hospital. To accommodate the addition, Kaleida will be asking the City to abandon a section of either Ellicott or Goodrich street.
There would be no new capacity, rather a consolidation of services and reduction in duplication. The goal is to renovate the tower (built in 1986) of the current Buffalo General Hospital plus build new infrastructure in the surrounding neighborhood of High, Ellicott, and Goodrich streets.
In January, the New York Department of Health awarded Kaleida Health $65 million toward the relocation of Millard Fillmore Gates Circle Hospital’s key services such as stroke, cardiac, and geriatrics. It was the largest HEAL-NY award in New York State.
“The integration of Millard Fillmore Gates Circle and Buffalo General Hospitals onto the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus will create an unprecedented flagship health care facility in Western New York,” said Kenneth Pearson, M.D., the chief of radiology for Kaleida Health.
Work is expected to be completed in two years.
Entry image: CitySky Photography by Nate Farnsworth.