$37 million Silverton hospital expansion opens Monday. Take a look inside.
It took years longer than anyone hoped, but the expanded portion of Legacy Silverton Medical Center is expected to open for patients Monday.
What most people will notice from the $37 million project is the new 21,000-square-foot expansion on the south side of the building. That increased the number of emergency room beds to 20 from 12.
Other improvements include a new entrance, covered ambulance drop-off area, new lobby, gift shop, coffee shop, family waiting room in the birth center, and a new chapel.
Silverton Hospital consolidates with Legacy Health
Silverton Hospital was founded in 1917. It consolidated with Legacy Health in 2016.
Legacy Health, headquartered in Portland, has six hospitals including Silverton, a children’s hospital and a 24-hour mental health service center. It also has 70 primary care and urgent care clinics.
Legacy has an urgent care clinic and medical offices in Woodburn and another medical office in Keizer.
The rebranded Legacy Silverton Medical Center still has its own board of directors.
When the merger happened, Legacy said it would invest $58 million in Silverton’s hospital, which has 48 licensed beds, not including the ER beds.
“There was really a few main aspects of that financial commitment when the organizations came together around improving access to care, physician recruitment and upgrading the technology that exists here,” said Joe Yoder, president of the hospital.
“We installed a new medical record system years ago when we first came together. We installed some new 3D mammography here at Silverton and Woodburn. And this is the major portion of that.”
Delays due to the COVID-19 pandemic slowed the project by years.
Physical construction started in 2022.
New entrance and security improvements
The new entrance will be south of the current one on the west side of the building.
Everyone who enters will have to go through a security screening, including passing through a metal detector.
Yoder said security was brought to the forefront after a shooting on July 22, 2023, at Legacy Good Samaritan Medical Center in Portland, where a security guard died.
The existing entrance — where a metal detector and security were added last year — will become an exit only.
The lobby is new and includes semi-private seating. And there is a bank of private triage rooms.
“It’s something that doesn’t exist everywhere today,” Yoder said. “It gives the patients a little more privacy.”
The emergency rooms are larger than many ERs and have windows and other touches, like paintings on the ceilings and closable sliding glass doors, intended to soothe patients.
Though there already is a CT scan machine in the hospital, Legacy is also putting one on the south side near the emergency room so patients can be scanned more quickly.
What’s included in the expansion?
Legacy Silverton Medical Center is located in a residential neighborhood in the hills west of downtown Silverton.
The hospital owned two homes on properties to the south of the main building for a number of years. It used one for IT functions and the other for staff sleeping and training rooms.
The property was needed for the expansion, so the houses were demolished.
In 2021, the hospital asked and received permission from the city council to rezone both residential properties, said construction manager James Berokoff. That allowed the hospital to expand the existing 90,000-square-foot building to the south.
The former urgent care across the street from the hospital is now doctors' offices, so the hospital added five “fast track” rooms for patients who need that type of care for medical issues such as minor broken bones and coughs.
Making entering and exiting the hospital easier
Transporting patients to the hospital was always a tricky proposition. The area where ambulances would drop off patients was not covered. In heavy rain or wind, they were going to get wet.
Now, not only are the entrance and exit in front of the hospital, there is a new covered ER entrance for ambulances off of Phelps Street behind the hospital.
The project was designed by Clark/Kjos Architects, and the work is being done by Anderson Construction.
What’s next for expansion of Legacy Silverton Medical Center?
The project now continues to the next phase, to improve imaging services, including MRI, mammography equipment and expanded ultrasound services.
With the ER moving to the south part of the hospital, the space it currently occupies in the northern portion of the building will be available.
“We haven’t exactly decided what we’re going to do in that space yet,” Yoder said. “We have a few ideas in the hopper. And we’ll work with the Silverton governing board.”
Bill Poehler covers Marion and Polk County for the Statesman Journal. Contact him at bpoehler@StatesmanJournal.com
This article originally appeared on Salem Statesman Journal: Legacy Silverton Medical Center hospital expansion doubles size of ER
