UPMC Pinnacle on Tuesday announced plans to expand its West Shore Hospital in Hampden Township in Cumberland County.
The announcement to add additional floors and 58 beds comes as Penn State Health seeks approval to build a 108-bed hospital about a mile away. With the additional beds, West Shore Hospital will have 160.
UPMC Pinnacle further said it will expand services at its Ortenzio Cancer Center, located on the same campus as West Shore Hospital along Technology Parkway.
West Shore Hospital, which opened in 2014, has five floors and 102 beds. In a news release, UPMC Pinnacle said West Shore “has consistently operated at 90 percent capacity.”
Still, much of that volume has come at the expense of Geisinger Holy Spirit, a decades old hospital located a few miles away outside Camp Hill. Geisinger Holy Spirit has seen a significant drop in occupancy, emergency room visits and revenue since the opening of West Shore.
That didn’t deter Penn State Health, which is the parent of Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, from announcing plans for a 108-bed hospital on a nearby tract known as Wentworth Corporate Park.
Both hospital sites are a short distance from the Wertzville Road interchange of Interstate 81, giving easy access from much of Cumberland County and Perry County, which has no hospital.
The locations also offer appealing demographics: a large population of older people in their peak health care consuming years who also tend to have good medical coverage and above average incomes.
In the news release, Philip Guarneschelli, president and CEO of UPMC Pinnacle said, “The response to our West Shore Campus has been tremendous … As we draw closer to celebrating the hospital’s fifth anniversary, we are pleased to be able to grow with the community and serve the needs of area patients even better.”
Penn State Health officials, in explaining the decision to build a hospital so close to another one, said a large portion of its patients come from the eastern Cumberland and nearby areas, the new location will be convenient for them.
Meanwhile, Penn State Health officials on Thursday plan to discuss their project, including results of a traffic study, with the Hampden Towship planning officials. The meeting is open to the public and scheduled to begin at 6:30 p.m.
Penn State Health has said it hopes to begin construction in spring and open the hospital by June, 2021. UPMC Pinnacle said it expects to expand West Shore Hospital by fall, 2020.
UPMC Pinnacle said it’s in the process of creating development plans and conducting a traffic study.
UPMC Pinnacle described the hospital project as a “horizontal” expansion with the new floors being build on top of the emergency room.
Dr. Christian Caicedo, the president of UPMC Pinnacle Cumberland Region, said in the news release, “Our goal is to minimize the impacts of construction and ensure that patients have clear signage to direct them efficiently if entrances are impacted.”