Quincy hospital officials announce new QVMC opening date

QUINCY — The new Quincy Valley Medical Center is scheduled to start admitting patients for treatment May 21, 2025. Glenda Bishop, QVMC chief executive officer, made the announcement Monday during the regular hospital board meeting. 

“There may be some staggering for some of our outpatient services, but our go live date is May 21,” she said.  

An open house and ribbon cutting to show the new hospital to the public tentatively is scheduled for May 14. Kayla van Lieshout of the Klosh Group, one of the managers of the project, said Monday construction was on schedule. 

Project manager Joe Kunkel said the move must be planned to ensure QVMC, whether it’s the old building or the new, never closes.  

“The way it will work, at 7 a.m. on (May) 21 – which is the shift change – the emergency room door in the current hospital will close and the emergency room door at the new facility will open,” Kunkel said. “The emergency room sign outside the new hospital will be unshrouded at that point, and we will disconnect the old emergency room sign at the current facility.” 

How patients are moved will be up to the physicians, he said. 

“Anybody who is in the ER at that time as a patient – it's 100% the doctor’s call. (If) this is a patient who’s going to be treated and released, we’ll probably keep (those patients) where they are, and they’ll be released from (the old QVMC),” he said. “If it’s a patient that they’re going to have to observe for a while, or they are thinking will probably be admitted, we’ll transfer that patient via ambulance from one ER entrance to the other. Same with any inpatients that may be admitted.”  

Hospital district voters approved a construction bond for up to $55 million in August 2022; site cleanup and construction began in fall 2023. If the project stays on schedule, hospital officials should receive a certificate of temporary occupancy about April 2, Kunkel said.  

The new facility will have to be inspected and licensed by the Washington Department of Health before it can be used. Kunkel said the goal is to have the inspections in March. 

“They’re not requiring Quincy to file and receive a new license,” he said. “They call it a remodel because we’re keeping our primary address.” 

Planning for the move will begin in early January. Bishop said staff members are going to have to familiarize themselves with the new layout – finding her way around has been a challenge, even with regular tours, she said. 

Not only do employees have to get used to a new building layout, they also have to be able to find everything they need without being required to stop and search for it, Bishop said in an earlier interview. That will require some practice. 

“For the staff, it’s going to take some time,” Bishop said.  

Kunkel said he told department managers that construction will be completed in a little over three months from Monday. A timeline has been taped to the wall of the existing QVMC conference room with benchmarks for the transition planning process.  

Hospital commissioners opted to build a storage building behind the new hospital; that project is in the design phase, Kunkel said. The building will be used to store equipment that doesn’t have a place anywhere else, the lawn mower and snowplow being examples.  

Hospital equipment is starting to arrive, van Lieshout said, with the CT scanner being the first big piece. It’s due to be in town next week, she said. Most of the kitchen equipment was installed in late November.  

The emergency room doors have been installed, she said, along with fixtures in some of the rooms. Light fixtures are being installed throughout the building, carpets are going down, and furniture has been ordered, van Lieshout said.  

Once the new hospital opens the existing building will be demolished and replaced with a new parking lot. That should be complete by August, van Lieshout said.