Northern Arizona Healthcare (NAH) is pleased to announce we will begin renovating the Flagstaff Medical Center (FMC) Emergency Department in June to improve efficiency and patient experience. The Emergency Department (ED) will remain open throughout the project.
This project is designed to refresh the space and to help improve efficiency with redesigned focused on getting patients seen in a timely manner. The project will begin on Monday, June 2 and continue in phases through January 2026. The FMC ED will remain open to patients the entire time.
Changes include creating areas to ensure more seamless service resulting in all patients receiving the most appropriate care.
The project will be completed in phases to ensure we are able to provide patient care throughout the work, which is expected to be completed by January 2026. The Emergency Department will remain open and will provide all emergency care throughout the project.
The project also includes aesthetic updates during construction, such as flooring, paint and lighting updates to give the area a refreshed feel. New finishes meet higher standards for infection prevention. They also align with the White House Sustainability Pledge that NAH signed in 2022. For example, the project includes replacing lighting throughout the department with LED fixtures. This contributes to our sustainability goals of reducing NAH’s electricity use and will lower NAH’s utility cost by approximately $5,000 per year.
This project is an effort to improve the existing Emergency space as much as possible in the interim time before NAH can construct a new hospital. In NAH’s plans for a new hospital, we will have 42 Emergency Department exam rooms, two trauma rooms, and three triage rooms. However, we are unable to add those elements in this renovation in the space we are in now.
- This renovation does not add square footage, nor eliminate the need for a new hospital, but is a stop-gap measure to improve efficiency and patient services while plans for a new hospital are being developed. NAH continues to explore options for a new proposed location for a new hospital to serve the region.
- Because of space limitations at the current hospital site, including structural limits, the inability to reduce the size of other departments, and the need to maintain the limited parking availability, we will not be able to add square footage to the ED during this project, redesigning the patient flow is our only option to improve service.