LITTLE FALLS — Work has already begun as Little Falls Hospital undertakes a $12.3 million expansion and renovation project to meet rising demand for outpatient services.

The project will focus on the hospital’s surgical suite as well as radiology, cardiology, and rehabilitation services.

Hospital CEO Michael Ogden says the hospital, located at 140 Burwell St., has seen a double-digit increase in demand for outpatient services in recent years. The problem, he says, is that the original builders of the hospital had inpatients in mind. 

The hospital once operated as a 150-bed facility, but is now a 25-bed acute-care facility. The average stay is 96 hours.

Little Falls Hospital handles between 14,000 and 15,000 emergency visits each year, performs more than 80,000 lab tests, handles more than 10,000 physical therapy sessions, and performs more than 1,000 outpatient surgeries.

When the hospital became a Bassett Healthcare Network affiliate in 2006, it undertook an $8 million project to upgrade its emergency department, establish a dialysis center operated by Bassett, open an adult day center operated by Herkimer’s Valley Health Services, and make renovations to its inpatient unit.

Now it’s time to turn the focus to the hospital’s outpatient facilities, Ogden says.

Over the next two years, the hospital will tackle a number of areas in need of updating, starting with its physical- and occupational-therapy services. Those services will move from their current second-floor location to the ground floor.

Work will then begin on a new home for the hospital’s surgical suite. The new facility, which replaces the current 50-year-old suite, will consolidate and modernize the department into a more efficient space that includes private treatment rooms.

“It will be a huge improvement over what we have,” Ogden notes.

Work will continue to the hospital’s radiology department, currently scattered around the facility. All components of radiology will be brought together into former laboratory space on the first floor.

Bassett Healthcare is already at work building a freestanding primary-care facility adjacent to the hospital. That will free up 4,000 square feet inside the hospital for the Bassett Heart Care Institute, a full-time cardiology consultation and testing service serving the northern region of Cooperstown–based Bassett’s coverage area. 

Currently, cardiology services are offered part time at Little Falls Hospital and part time at Bassett’s Herkimer clinic.

The hospital will also demolish a vacant building to create a new, covered, two-lane entrance to the emergency department and replace its old emergency backup system. Currently, the backup power system only covers certain parts of the hospital, meaning ambulances transporting patients are sometimes diverted to other facilities in times of power outages, Ogden says. 

The new system will keep power on at the entire hospital in the event of a power failure.

Finishing touches at the end of the project will include new electrical and mechanical elements for the elevators, along with a facelift inside the elevator cars. The hospital will also get an electronic medical records system that connects it with all Bassett facilities.

Bivens & Associates Architects, PLLC, is the project architect with engineering work by Schenectady–based M/E Engineering, P.C. St. Louis, Mo.–based McCarthy Building Companies, Inc., which has an office in Cooperstown, will serve as construction manager. McCarthy previously worked on the 62,000-square-foot inpatient building addition at Bassett’s Cooperstown hospital.

Little Falls Hospital (www.lfhny.org) will fund the project with a $5.2 million Health Care Efficiency and Affordability Law for New Yorkers (HEAL NY) grant, assistance from the Kirby Foundation of New Jersey, bequests to the hospital, and other private and community funding sources.

The hospital employs about 270 people. According to its 2010 Form 990 on file at www.guidestar.org, the hospital reported revenue of $31.7 million and expenses of $26.2 million.

Bassett Healthcare Network is an integrated health-care system that provides care and services to people living in an eight-county region (including Madison, Oneida, and Chenango) covering 5,600 square miles in Upstate. The organization includes six corporately affiliated hospitals, as well as skilled nursing facilities, community and school-based health centers, and health partners in related fields.