New Sentara medical office building 45% occupied

The Medical Office Building on the new Sentara Albemarle Regional Health Campus in Elizabeth City is about 45% occupied by partnering medical practices.

That’s according to Beth Delaney, SAMC plant engineer and operations director, who, along with Teresa Watson, SAMC’s president, provided an update on Sentara Health’s new hospital campus in Elizabeth City to the Elizabeth City Rotary Club on Monday.

The new $200 million medical campus is being built on 135 acres at Halstead Boulevard Extension and Thunder Road and will replace the current SAMC on North Road Street.

The new campus, when complete, will include a 235,000-square-foot hospital with up to 90 beds, including 10 in the intensive care unit. On the east side of the campus is the 83,000-square-foot medical office building, which features physician practices and other services that are already treating patients.

Watson said the hospital is being constructed to accommodate growth and to add more patient beds in the future. She said advances in surgical procedures, such as hip or knee replacements, are allowing hospitals to release patients to return home the same day as the surgery.

“I had a knee replacement and I went home the same day,” Watson said. “Which, you know, 15 years ago was unheard of.”

Delaney talked about different aspects of the campus. For instance, while discussing the new medical office building, she noted that the building has two separate entrances, one for the oncology center and the main entrance, which is for patients requiring all other services. The entrance to the oncology center is on the side of the building that faces Halstead Boulevard Extended. The building’s main entrance is on the side of the building that faces Thunder Road.

“We’ve had a lot of problems with that right now trying to get people going to the right places,” Delaney said.

In August, Virginia Oncology Associates began operating at its new location on the Medical Office Building’s second floor. The new diagnostics center opened in April as the home for patients needing X-rays, mammograms and pre-surgical lab work.

Several more medical services are expected to move into the Medical Office Building when the campus fully opens in 2025. Those will include general and vascular surgery, pediatrics, obstetrics and gynecology, a wound treatment center, and orthopedics and otolaryngology services.

“We are giving three acres of the site to our Pasquotank EMS partners so they’ll be located on the site as they are today” at SAMC, Delaney said.

In July, Pasquotank-Camden Emergency Medical Services Director Jerry Newell told Pasquotank commissioners that the new station, which is designated as EMS Station 50, will be built in the northeast corner of the campus and adjacent to Thunder Road.

Sentara officials are eyeing August 2025 as an opening date for the new hospital.

Watson has experience in opening a new hospital. Prior to taking over SAMC, Watson was president and facility executive at Atrium Health Care in Lincolnton, where she helped close that hospital and open a new one.