Nantucket’s Outdated Hospital to be Replaced

Nantucket is getting a new hospital to replace the old and cramped Cottage Hospital.

Cottage Chief Executive Dr. Margot Hartmann says the current facility is 57 years old, energy inefficient and lacks adequate parking spaces. It has just one operating room and the emergency department is too small, especially when summer residents arrive on island.

She says the 19-bed, wood-shingled hospital sits on about six-acres and was built when "medicine was delivered in a very different way."

She tells the Cape Cod Times a new facility will be built on a 20-acre campus in the middle of the island and is expected to cost about $75 million.

There is no timetable for the new faciltiy to open.

[Associated Press}