GOSHEN — Goshen Health has announced that, since 2018, its fundraising campaign has raised $12.5 million, and that funding will go its current building project.
Goshen Health is constructing a four-story patient tower, which broke ground in November of 2019, with a scheduled completion date in the spring of 2022, according to a news release. The project is slated to cost $98 million.
“We are building the future of health care to meet the diverse needs of our growing community,” said Goshen Health President and Chief Executive Officer Randy Christophel in the release. “Never in its history has the hospital seen this level of philanthropic support from the community. We are humbled and incredibly grateful for these funds.”
With the new project, hospital rooms are designed to allow space for diagnostic and monitoring equipment to be brought to the bedside, enable multiple disciplines of health care workers to interact with the patient, and provide additional comfort for patients and their families, according to the organization.
“Medical equipment has changed drastically through the years,” Christophel said in the release. “The new building will have sophisticated electronic communication technology facilitating immediate feedback and information. And, we’ll have integrated medical alert and monitoring technology that will automatically populate critical information into the medical record and actively monitor patient safety, freeing caregivers to focus more on patient care. All of these advances will work together to provide a state-of-the-art healing environment for our patients.”
In recent years, the leaders of Goshen Health and Goshen Health Foundation have started beginning phases of the campaign. However in 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic halted most of the fundraising plans so the hospital staff could focus on more urgent needs.
“Under usual circumstances, we seek out major gifts, gather momentum and then we move to a more public phase,” said Vice President of Goshen Health Foundation Jim Caskey in the release. “Like many health care systems, Goshen Health was hit full force in 2020 by the pandemic and the tremendous needs of our communities. We needed to address these needs and set aside fundraising for a time.”
Caskey added that philanthropy should always be part of a community in which people take care of one another.
“We need to protect and invest in each other as well as our health care services,” he said. “There are short-term needs for our hospital, but we must also consider the long-term viability and ongoing needs of Goshen Health, our colleagues and our community members. Continual support allows for excellent medical care for generations to come.”
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