Thomas Breen photo
YNHH’s West Pavilion turnaround at Park and Howard, soon to be a temporary emergency room.
Yale New Haven Hospital won city permission to build a temporary 35-bed emergency room to accommodate a coming spike in Covid and flu cases — pending aldermanic approval that the six-month project won’t affect parking in the medical district.
That approval came at Wednesday night’s latest special meeting of the City Plan Commission. The three-and-a-half-hour virtual meeting took place online via Zoom.
The local land-use commissioners voted unanimously in support of Yale New Haven Hospital’s site plan application to set up a temporary emergency room building at 1 Park St. at the corner of Howard Avenue.
Zoom
Wednesday night’s City Plan Commission meeting.
Yale New Haven Health (YNHH) Senior Project Manager Alex Esdaile and YNHH-hired attorney Amy Souchuns explained that the hospital plans to convert the “West Pavilion turnaround” — that is, the circular driveway hospital entrance at the corner of Park Street and Howard Avenue — into “35 additional patient care areas” complete with framing, cladding, full utilities, and fire protection.
“It’s essentially a standalone, fully functioning care unit,” Esdaile said.
Why the need for the extra emergency room space?
Because YNHH’s current emergency department is pretty full already — and only getting busier, thanks to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic and patients who have deferred care on other ailments over the past nearly two years.
“The expectation is that things are going to in fact get worse as we get more into winter weather and respiratory season,” Esdaile added. “We’re expecting a surge of severe cold and flu that we didn’t experience last year, to peak sometime in the winter.”
Souchuns said that this project is “truly intended to be a temporary structure.”
It will be enclosed and there will be bollards placed to protect the area from any vehicles potentially trying to enter.
Emergency room visitors who previously used the West Pavilion turnaround to drop off patients or hand their car keys over to a valet will instead need to use the North Pavilion turnaround outside of the Smilow cancer center during the six months that this temporary emergency room is in place.
The location of the temporary emergency room (circled in red).
Just to confirm, this is going to be a temporary structure, right? City Engineer Giovanni Zinn asked.
That’s right, Souchuns replied. There will be no foundations, no excavation. Everything will be mounted on top of existing pavement and concrete. It will take four to six weeks to construct, and should be up from mid-January through mid-June.
Westville Alder and City Plan Commissioner Adam Marchand described the two times in his life in New Haven when he had to use that West Pavilion turnaround, the times he and his then-pregnant wife were rushing to the hospital as she preparing to give birth to each of their two sons. This is an important entry point for pregnant and in-labor parents, Marchand said.
“You’re sorting out what to say to expectant mothers and families [about] where they should drive?”
That’s right, Esdaile said. Everyone will now enter through the North Pavilion outside of Smilow on Park Street. The valet system will remain in place.
“I hope that you will have well thought-out public education, signage, and people available to direct people where to go,” added Commission Vice-Chair Ed Mattison. “These types of things do require a lot more preparation and a lot more flexibility on site to get them to work without chaos.”
Esdaile said the hospital’s marketing and communications staffers are putting together a “strategic communication plan” for visitors, patients, and employees at the hospital about the West Pavilion turnaround conversion.
The West Pavilion turnaround, as viewed from Howard Ave.
Esdaile and Souchuns said that this temporary change will not affect the hospital’s parking capacity, because the turnaround is just a drop-off area as it is. No permanent on-street parking spaces will be going away.
Will this temporary emergency room construction result in the hiring of more hospital staff? Marchand asked.
No, Esdaile replied. “It’s going to allow staff to function more efficiently, because this is going to be dedicated to low-acuity” patients who are able to cohort.
That is, some of these patients are currently being treated in the emergency department’s hallways because the rooms are all filled. “It’s terribly inefficient,” Esdaile said.
“It gets the lower-acuity patients out of a hallway and into a private space where they can properly be treated,” Souchuns said.
YNHH images
Before (left) and after (right) drawings of the planned temporary emergency room.
The site plan for that temporary emergency room.
Before voting unanimously in support of the temporary emergency room, the commissioners added one condition of approval and one additional finding to their report.
The condition of approval is that YNHH can begin building out this temporary emergency room only after receiving approval from the Board of Alders at next week’s meeting that the emergency room plans will not affect the Medical Area Overall Parking Plan (MOAPP), which the alders sign off on every year.
The commissioners also noted that, based on Wednesday night’s hearing and their subsequent vote, the City Plan Commission finds that “no amendment to the overall parking plan should be necessary for this project.”
So, the commissioners would rather have patients treated in hallways than lose parking spots. What madness.