Hospital to move emergency room entrance

MARENGO — The entrance to the Compass Memorial emergency room is moving as the hospital continues its expansion project, Mary Warwick, director of administrative services, said Thursday.

As of May 20, the entrance to the emergency room will be located on Western Avenue. Contractors began creating angle parking on the west side of the hospital last month. The 10 spaces are 10 feet wide and include one van accessible handicapped space, said Plant Operations Manager Jesse Belez.

A sidewalk and ramps will lead to a new door, which will be cut into the wall next week.

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That door will take patients through a vestibule and into the emergency room, said Warwick. Cameras will be installed “so we can have eyes on them from the parking lot into the building,” she said.

The current emergency room parking on West May Street will be unavailable after May 20 as expansion of the emergency department beings, said Warwick. “We are going from a four-bed to an eight-bed ER,” she said.

The hospital will add an indoor space for ambulance drop-off. When the project is complete, ambulances will come in from Western Avenue and pull into a garage so workers and patients will be out of the weather during transfer from the ambulance to an emergency room bay.

Fences around the construction area will be erected May 20, said Warwick. They will not block the main entrance or the main parking lot outside it.

The hospital will put up signs to direct patients to the new parking area, which will be in use until the emergency room construction is completed in June of 2025. The emergency room addition will increase ER space by 10,150 square feet, Belez said.

New administration offices will be added to the north side of the hospital, increasing its space by 2,400 square feet, said Belez. In-patient space is growing by 5,300 square feet. Patient rooms will be remodeled and made larger.

“We have been growing,” said Warwick, and the number of emergency room visits continues to rise.