Yes! As part of our construction project, the Main Entrance of Northwestern Medical Center will be temporarily relocated on Monday, July 11^th. Visitors and hospital patients with non-emergent medical needs will be temporarily entering the hospital through the NMC Conference Center entrance, located on the east side of the main hospital building. Patients with medical emergencies will continue to enter the hospital through the Emergency Department entrance.

During this phase of construction, which is expected to run into October, all vehicle traffic will enter and exit the hospital campus using the Crest Road entrance (located just east of the hospital’s main driveway). Ambulances and emergent patients will access the Emergency Department using Crest Road, which wraps around the hospital building. Visitor and non-emergent hospital patient parking will be located at the front of campus at the corner of Fairfield Street and Crest Road, as well as in the Conference Center parking lot. Hospital staff members are currently involved in a ‘Healthy Commute’ challenge to reduce the number of cars on campus to help provide proper access for patients and visitors.

In preparation for this phase of construction, Northwestern Cardiology and Northwestern Pulmonology have relocated temporarily to Suite 10 of Doctors Office Common. In addition, the NMC Laboratory’s outpatient blood drawing service has relocated temporarily to Suite 1 of the Doctors Office Common.  It is important to note that throughout construction, Northwestern Urgent Care and the other practices and services in Cobblestone Health Commons and the Doctors Office Common remain open and accessible by patients, with parking for those patients at each of those locations. In addition, traffic no longer flows all the way through campus from the Northwestern Counseling & Support Services entrance off Fisher Pond Road. That entrance now only serves NCSS’s main building and some NMC staff parking. All vehicle traffic entering campus for the hospital’s main building, Cobblestone, and Doctors Office Commons now enters campus from Fairfield Street.

Our team has worked hard to communicate these moves and to reach scheduled patients in advance when possible. Through our amazing volunteers and our dedicated staff, we are putting interim processes in place to help ensure patients and visitors can navigate these temporary changes. We understand it can be confusing as entrances shift, waiting areas move, and paths of travel change. We deeply appreciate our community’s patience with these changes during construction, as these are the necessary steps leading to an enhanced healing environment. The temporary relocation of the Main Entrance allows for construction at the front of the hospital to create a more easily accessible entrance, a more centralized registration area, new specialty medical clinic space, and an attached medical office building. Meanwhile, toward the back of campus, Crest Road is shifting away from the hospital building to allow for an expansion that creates private rooms for all of our Medical/Surgical and Intensive Care patients. The efficiency, flexibility, and enhanced patient experience which will come from these new and renovated areas are so important to the future of NMC as a vibrant community hospital.

For more information on our progress with our construction project, please visit our website at www.northwesternmedicalcenter.org . You will find a link at the bottom left of our homepage entitled “Learn about Our Expansion” that will connect you to ongoing updates and background information. If you have any questions about the project, please call our Community Relations office at (802) 524-1280. Thank you, again, for your patience with work these enhancements to our healing environment require. The future space will be well worth it. We deeply appreciate your support of local healthcare. Thank you.

— Jill Berry Bowen, NMC’s Chief Executive Officer