NWH Uses $500G Donation to Expand Post-Op Care Unit

Northern Westchester Hospital (NWH) prides itself on providing the best experience it can summon for patients who arrive at the facility for healthcare.

For those who go to the hospital for one of the roughly 12,000 surgeries a year, the care after the procedure promises to get even better in the near future.

Recently, the hospital began work on converting about 10,000 square feet of space that will nearly double the capacity of its Post Anesthesia Care Unit (PACU) with 13 new bays. The existing 14-bed PACU serves patients that have gone under one of a wide variety of complex surgeries so they can begin recuperating in an environment that’s most conducive to healing.

It is also served by a team of high-functioning staff that is on par with an Intensive Care Unit, said Derek Anderson, executive director of NWH.

“For all of us, I think that it’s important that we feel like the environment itself is modern, it’s clean, it’s patient-centered, it’s family-centered and we think about that when we design these projects here at Northern Westchester, how will this impact how the patient can recover, how they need a more healing environment, not just what you think of as a traditional, sterile, coming-out-of-surgery environment,” Anderson said. “How do we make it more warm and welcoming so it can be an investment in this community.”

Funding to create the expanded PACU has come from a $500,000 gift from Adam R. Rose and Peter R. McQuillan, two Cross River philanthropists who have donated to a variety of law enforcement, healthcare and arts and cultural organizations and causes around the area.

Rose, a retired real estate developer, said at 64 years old he’s part of a large aging cohort in the population and thinks more about healthcare facilities such as hospitals to serve the community.

“So I think that Peter and I, it increasingly became clear to us that this is an important thing, that it’s a very deserving, well-run institution and that if we can help out what so many other people have done and make it even better, than that’s really our obligation,” Rose said.

Anderson said that as new populations of people move into the area and as the population ages, hospitals must rethink how care is provided. The 12,000 surgeries a year represent about a 6 percent increase over the past year, a number that may continue to grow as more people reach their senior years.

The expanded PACU will take up 8,500 square feet and will serve those patients in vascular, thoracic, orthopedic and electrophysiology procedures as well as those who undergo cardiac surgery in the hospital’s Seema Boesky Heart Center. The remaining 1,500 square feet will be for two new nurse stations, supply, storage and medication rooms and ancillary support areas.

To make room for the larger unit, laboratory operations were moved from the second floor next to the operating room and relocated into a building on the north side of the campus, Anderson said.

He said the hospital is grateful for the gift from Rose and McQuillan, which helped accelerate the construction of the expanded unit. It was first planned at the end of 2019, but was delayed due to COVID-19.

Northern Westchester Hospital depends on its donors to have important projects completed and helps to let other philanthropists and organizations become aware that hospitals rely on their generosity to serve their populations, Anderson noted.

“It’s that collaborative engagement that helps us and they can see the work that’s being done at this hospital, so that others are inspired to contribute as well,” Anderson said.

Rose said he was thrilled to help both healthcare providers and the community at their local hospital.

“They keep improving the whole patient experience,” he said. “They’re very focused on it and this contributes substantially to it.”