UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- A $42.3 million project to provide renovated, private acute and intermediate care patient rooms at Penn State Health Milton S. Hershey Medical Center was approved today (July 15) by the Penn State Board of Trustees, following a recommendation from the board’s Committee on Finance, Business and Capital Planning.

“As an academic medical center, our goal is to ensure we meet patients’ needs for the highest levels of specialized care that is delivered locally,” said Deborah Berini, president of the Milton S. Hershey Medical Center. “Demand continues to grow for access to leading-edge technologies, and treatments, including expertise in clinical research. This renovation project will improve access to that care and demonstrates our continuing commitment to enhance the patient experience.”

The project will renovate the multi-bed Acute Care Unit on the Medical Center’s third floor, South Addition. It also will repurpose Labor and Delivery spaces that were vacated following the completion of the Penn State Health Children’s Hospital expansion in October 2020. When completed, the renovated Intermediate Care Unit will include 28 adult beds — 20 of which will be intensive-care capable — and two isolation rooms.

The renovation project is part of a multiphase bed-expansion program that began with the Children’s Hospital expansion, which included 74 new pediatric beds and 50 new adult beds. That expansion has enabled renovations at the adult hospital that will eliminate the older, shared rooms on the third floor and the conversion of the former Neonatal Intensive Care Unit spaces on the seventh floor. As a result, 53 renovated private rooms will be opened between 2022 and 2024.

Work on the Intermediate Care Unit renovations project is scheduled to start later this summer and be completed in late 2024. Flad Architects of Madison, Wisconsin, is finalizing the renovation design. Pyramid Construction Services of Lemoyne will provide construction site management.