With the completed merger of Community Medical Center in Scranton and its affiliates with Geisinger Health System, the new Geisinger-Community Medical Center (G-CMC) is racing to enhance clinical programs, increase physician recruitment, expand and improve facilities, and implement new information systems, adding jobs and physical developments at breakneck speed.
“The goal,” says Wendy Wilson, associate vice president of marketing and public relations, “is to keep people in this area for specialized care. A lot of money goes out of the area,” with patients leaving for Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York and other bigger cities.
G-CMC is actively recruiting and hiring sub-specialists in a variety of areas including neurology, neurosurgery, surgical oncology and pediatrics. They may even look at a physician recruitment firm to expand their workforce. Over the next year, G-CMC expects to hire 25 new physicians and physicians’ assistants.
In the last month alone, Wilson says, G-CMC also hired 50 fulltime nurses and 17 other positions including support staff, technicians and administrative staff. With the new fiscal year that began July 1, the hospital is budgeted to add another 80 new fulltime positions.
The organization is also moving ahead with major capital improvements, approving $125.7 million to enhance patient care in Scranton. An $80 million expansion at G-CMC, now in the design phase, will include 13 large, state-of-the-art operating suites, a new intensive/critical care unit and medical office space and is scheduled to begin construction next spring. Also moving forward is a new $25.7 million physician office building at the Mount Pleasant Corporate Center in Scranton and a $20 million project underway to upgrade G-CMC’s information technology system.
Source: Wendy Wilson, Geisinger-Community Medical Center
Writer: Elise Vider