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07/17/2018 12:00 AMAfter a year of work and some $3 million in reconstruction, Middlesex Hospital has opened its renovated facility in Essex at 252 Westbrook Road in the building that once housed Middlesex Hospital’s Shoreline Medical Center. That facility moved to an expanded location off Interstate 95 in Westbrook in 2014. Now the old building in Essex, which had been unoccupied since the move, has been turned into offices for the departments of Physical Rehabilitation and Occupational and Environmental Medicine.
“A lot of time, hard work, and money went into renovating the former Shoreline Medical Center building,” said Middlesex President and CEO Vincent G. Capece, Jr. “Our Occupational and Environmental Medicine and Physical Rehabilitation departments are thrilled to move into their new home. This beautiful facility will give them additional space and resources, allowing them to continue providing exceptional care to residents of Essex and surrounding shoreline communities.”
Occupational and environmental medicine programs along with physical rehabilitation used to be located in a rental building at 192 Westbrook Road accessed by either steep steps or a long ramp that was challenging for many clients. Now there is easy, ground-level access to the renovated building.
“I think people are very happy. They wanted to know what was going to happen to this space,” said David Guiffrida, vice president for operations at Middlesex Hospital.
The footprint of the structure remains the same, but there has been extensive remodeling to both outside and inside of the building.
“The facility is over 50 years old, and it needed quite a lot of work. We needed to bring it up to today’s standards—brand new framing, renovations to the interior and exterior, new mechanics,” Guiffrida said.
There is a new roof, new HVAC system, and new flooring and lighting.
The facility now has more space for therapy in a main exercise area as well as additional private rooms both for individual consultation and treatment.
“We have much improved capacity,” said Matthew Lundquist, the physician who is the medical director of the facility.
Lundquist heads the Occupational and Environmental Medicine Department, an area that, he said, deals with “everything to do with heath care in employment, workers comp, and the ability to do a job.”
Brian Taber, the physical rehabilitation director, also praised the added space in the new facility.
“This is all much needed; it’s more conducive to a wide range of treatments,” he said.
Physical rehabilitation includes both physical and occupational therapy as well as speech therapy. Programs provide treatment for everything from sports injuries to pulmonary and cancer rehabilitation and women’s pelvic health. Robin Chapin of Ivoryton, one of the physical therapists on the staff, has just returned from training in the McKenzie Method, a system of identifying and treating back pain.
The refurbished facility’s waiting room has been reconfigured from the time when the building housed the Shoreline Medical Center. In addition, it is significantly larger than the waiting area in the building from which the departments just moved.
“Room for everybody and no more standing,” said Taber said
The new waiting room brought back memories for Taber, a 1999 graduate of Valley Regional who grew up in Deep River.
“I remember standing over there when I was 16 and came in for some stitches,” he said pointing to one corner of the waiting room that used to be the nurses’ intake station.
The location is the same as the former Shoreline Medical Center, but the renovated facility will not fulfill the same functions. The various therapy treatments are by appointment. Injuries, with the exception of on-the job-mishaps, should go to an urgent care center, such as the Middlesex Hospital’s 1687 Boston Post Road, Old Saybrook location, or the Shoreline Emergency Medical Center, 250 Flat Rock Place, Westbrook.