PINE BUSH � Where Route 17 crosses Interstate 84, a new regional hospital is rising, and when it's completed it will have a major impact on the provision of medical care in Orange County and surrounding areas. This is the Orange Regional Medical Center, and it will replace the current Horton Hospital in Middletown and the Arden Hill Hospital in Goshen, both of which will be shuttered and the properties sold.

Rob Lee, Executive Director of Public Relations and Marketing for Orange Regional says, "This new hospital been in the works for at least a decade. We formally merged the two existing hospitals in 2002, and immediately began planning to build the new facility."

And what a facility it will be!

The 600,000 plus square foot structure will have 374 licensed beds in private rooms for patients. The Emergency Department will have 50 large bays. One wing of the hospital will be the Spagnoli Oncology Center, paid for with a major donation from the Spagnoli family. There will also be the Rowley family Birthing Center, named for the well known building supply firm and family in central Orange County. That unit will have 12 Single Labor/Delivery and Recovery Rooms, as well as 23 Single Bed, Post Partum Rooms and 2 C-Section Operating Rooms.

Indeed, for surgery, the new facility will have plenty of room with 12 operating rooms available. There will be two Radiology Rooms, a dedicated Pediatric Unit and a Cardiac Rehabilitation Center.

The cost of all this is in the region of $300 million and counting, because of course, even after the facility is finished � by April 2011, with patients moved in by August or September 2011 � there will be more to come.

Rob Lee says, "There will be a Level 2 Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, not immediately, but soon, and there will also be a Level 2 Trauma Center."

That trauma center will mean that accident victims in Orange County will no longer need to be airlifted to Westchester's Valhalla facility as often as they are today.

However, the new hospital will have its own helipad, which will allow for patients to be moved by helicopter either to the facility or onward to other hospitals with certain specialties.

Rob Lee says, "The facility already has an elective angioplasty unit planned, and it will be a designated stroke center."

The new hospital, the first entirely new hospital built in New York in 25 years, wil also be situated close to Crystal Run Road, where the Orange Regional Medical Pavilion already sits, as well as the Crystal Run Healthcare Patient Center.

"Orange Regional will have 550 physicians with privileges at the hospital," notes Rob Lee. "And among other things, what that means is that services and patient convenience is going to be so much better than what we have now."

All in all, Mr. Lee says, "This will be an ideal location for our entire region. All our existing services at the Horton and Arden facilities will be kept, and we will be adding lots more." Bill Bassett, former Superintendent of Schools at Pine Bush School District, is a member of the hospital's board of directors, and has recently been spreading the word about the progress of the new medical center.

"Fundraising will continue," he says. "The capital campaign is ongoing, and has raised almost $21 million at this time."

"For folks in the Pine Bush area," says Bassett, "this hospital will mean having a start of the art facility built with their convenience and care in mind. It actually has been designed with a healing environment in mind. All rooms are going to be private rooms, which contributes to control of hospital infections. So, state of the art, right in your own backyard."

Christine Maraia, President of the Orange Regional Medical Center Foundation, adds, "The $21 million was our target goal and we're likely to reach that. So, we will extend that goal through the opening of the new hospital, which means most likely, August or September of 2011, when patients are moved in."

Of course, it won't stop there. "The cost of technology has skyrocketed," says Maraia. "To maintain a state of the art facility we have to continuously improve and therefore the need for community support and dollars will always be present at Orange Regional Medical Center."

For more information, or to make a donation, call 845-294-2135 or visit www.ormc.org.