Ground Breaking Day on the Eastern Shore

Many of you know we live in a semi rural area. Our town is just one mile square. Our population is just  500. In fact if you take the population of the entire Virginia portion of the Delmarva peninsula, Accomack and Northampton counties, we are just slightly over 50,000 folks (not counting livestock).
Amazingly, we have had a Hospital here for over 85 years. But the time had come for a new, modern facility.

Today was the Ground Breaking Ceremony for our new hospital. A few hundred people showed up. From Hospital staff and Administrators, Local, County, and State elected officials, Hospital Board Members and Trustees, and an lot of just plain folks like us.

In 2008, after many years of being a Community owned and operated hospital, they realized the need to associate with a larger health care organization. After a few years of searching, the Board of Directors chose Riverside Health Care System. The choice was based on the fact that Riverside was not a Corporate run organization. Being two of the poorest counties in the State of Virginia, this was vitally important to our citizens.

The distinguished gentleman in the center above, with the blue tie, is our Mayor, Jack Pierson. We all are so glad that he got to keep his gold shovel since he will be breaking ground for our new Town Hall soon. Of course in true Eastern Shore style, we had some refreshments afterwards. Nothing too splashy.

SOOOO what is this all going to look like you may wonder...... well, this is what it looks like now

And this is what it will look like in about two years.

 The new hospital will be approximately 155,000 square feet with an adjacent physician office building of approximately 44,000 square feet that will also house the new Cancer Center, all constructed with materials that are compatible with the architectural character of Virginia’s Eastern Shore. Along with a skilled, experienced and compassionate staff, here’s what you can count on once you’re inside the new Riverside Shore Memorial Hospital: • 57 all-private Inpatient Rooms (with expansion capability for 12 more rooms) • 3 Operating Rooms equipped with the leading-edge safety features • State-of-the-art Intensive Care Unit • 24-hour full-service Emergency Department with 13 private rooms • A comfortable and comforting Newborn Unit • 2 Sleep Study areas • 10 Infusion areas • A Diagnostic Center with MRI, CT and general radiology capabilities • Day Surgery facilities and other outpatient services In all cases, the new facilities will include the latest technology to help you heal and keep you even safer… all brought together with one of the nation’s most advanced electronic health record systems. 

So that is our BIG NEWS here on the Shore. I hope i didn't bore anyone, but we are very excited about this finally becoming a reality after many years of talk, discussions, arguments, and a lot of planing.
Grenville