Crowds turn out for grand opening of Calais hospital

There was a festive atmosphere in Calais on Saturday morning, July 8, as hundreds of people turned out for the grand opening celebration and ribbon cutting ceremony of the city's new hospital.

The theme of the day centered around the new Calais Regional Hospital being known by customers as the best rural hospital in Maine. After the crowd was welcomed by Dennis Mahar, chairman of the CRH board of directors, Governor John Baldacci thanked Mahar and hospital CEO Ray Davis Jr. for their leadership as well as all of the volunteers who helped make the dream of a new facility a reality. "The community response has yielded tremendous results," noted the governor. "This is a wonderful model for all the other places who should be looking to Calais as a way to get things done."

Mary Mayhew, president of Government Affairs and Communications, Maine Hospital Association, had just traveled for the first time on the Airline, and there were chuckles in the audience when she pointed out that people won't have to travel far for high quality health care.

Also speaking at the ceremony, which Dr. Michael Kessler called "an historic occasion," were community member Harold Silverman, CRH Building and Grounds Committee Chairman C. Brand Livingstone, Mike Aube, state director of USDA Rural Development, steering committee co-chairmen Drew Case and Nick DelMonaco Jr., and Ray Davis.
The CRH Capital Campaign Steering Committee thus far has raised over $1,200,000 for the replacement hospital. Major donors include Domtar Industries-Woodland Mill, the Libra Foundation, Calais Federal Savings and Loan Association, Calais Regional Hospital Auxiliary, Davis Family Foundation and DiCenzo Realty.

Following the ribbon cutting, tours of the new facility were held until 3 p.m. Since the building is not yet being utilized for patient care, visitors got a look at all of the behind-the-scenes areas. Some of the highlights of the new Calais Regional Hospital building are an open, enlarged lobby with a new gift shop and dining area; a centralized information area where every patient will be registered; 25 private inpatient rooms that look and feel more like a nice hotel room than a traditional hospital room; two state-of-the-art operating rooms and an endoscopy suite, as well as a new post-anesthesia care unit; a diagnostic imaging department including CT scan, mammography, bone densitometry, ultrasound, nuclear medicine and X-ray; an emergency department that includes seven private exam rooms and a single trauma room adjacent to the nurses' station; and labor/delivery and recovery suites incorporating modern medicine with hometown charm and warmth.

The opening of the new hospital and patient move is scheduled for July 20.