After years of planning and construction, Mohawk Valley Health System’s new Wynn Hospital in Utica is now just a couple of months away from opening. It will be a significant upgrade to health care for people in that community.

The new hospital is scheduled to be completed on October 29. MVHS officials say they are excited to offer a new experience not only for their patients but also for their staff.

“About 150 employees and physicians are being trained so that they can train all the other employees and physicians who will be working in this building,” said Darlene Stromstad, president and CEO of MVHS.

The nine-story hospital will have more than 3,000 workers. Parking for the new facility has been a concern, especially since the parking garage won’t be complete until March 2024.

In the meantime, off-site parking will be available in the downtown area.

“We are in the process of developing parking plans for all of our employees, physicians, visitors, patients and guests. We will make available to our patients, family members and our guests, valet parking right out the front door,” Stromstad said.

The hope for the new hospital is to make things easier and more efficient for patients and staff. Bob Scholefield, executive vice president of facilities and real estate, says one way to do that is by having all the emergency rooms standardized.

“Have the muscle memory to realize everything is in the place the last time you worked,” Scholefield said. “That minimizes the risk of errors so you’re not connecting someplace that you thought was a particular type of plug, but it’s not.”

With a more open floor plan for the emergency department, nurses will be able to maneuver more easily in order to tend to patients’ needs. And that’s exciting for chief nursing officer Jerome Dayao.

“We do have very adjacent imaging spaces here,” Dayao said. “Our CT scanners are close by, across the trauma bay, and we also have the MRI in there. In addition to these things, our emergency department has about 64 beds within it.

“So that means 40 are the regular bays that you see here. We have two trauma bays, then 10 CDU beds … these are the fast-track patients that not necessarily need to be admitted but are being monitored closely.”

There are a lot of moving parts, including hiring a company to move all their patients in one day, but officials have confidence in their plan.

“We believe that this opening of this new hospital gives us the opportunity to begin the transformation of health care in this community, and we are really, really excited about it,” Stromstad said.