In defiance of the bright sun and the escalating temperatures during this week's heat wave, crowds of Ellenville and Wawarsing community members flocked to Ellenville Regional Hospital's campus to show their support for the newly renovated and improved Physical Therapy wing.

On hand to speak were ERH president and CEO Steve Kelley, Physical Therapy Program Manager Theresa Marcel, a recent physical therapy patient Rosemarie McBride, and state senator John Bonacic (R/I/C – Mount Hope), who Kelley credited with coming through time after time to help the hospital expand and grow with support and funding. During his opening remarks, Kelley took time to recognize at least a dozen people and groups who had helped to make the new Physical Therapy wing possible, thanking the doctors, staff, and patients who make the hospital what it is.

The project cost an estimated $700,000, which paid for the new entrance, equipment, and consultation rooms. Through Senator Bonacic's efforts, the hospital received $150,000 in state funding.

"Senator Boncic has secured more financial resources for this hospital than anyone else," said Kelley during his remarks. "Senator Bonacic has been there for us. He helped us through the approval process for the senior living facility. He was there for us in our darkest hours, at our tipping point."

"I love coming to these groundbreaking ceremonies when hospital services in a small community are being expanded," said Senator Bonacic after the dedication ceremony. "Hospitals are under financial siege in the state of New York, especially the rural hospitals. It's hard to keep them open, and really, you don't find many expansion projects like this.

"When I'm no longer a senator, these are the kinds of things that I'll always remember," Bonacic continued, "because this is an asset that'll keep on giving, and giving back to the people. But again, it's about the healthcare providers here who make the hospital."

"You've come a long way, baby."

Program Manager Theresa Marcel, who Kelley said was hired in 2001 and "start[ed] out as a department of one, so her supervisory span was herself," spoke about her personal history with the hospital.

"I'm so very proud to be standing here at this podium in front of our new physical therapy center…my mother was the ER and OR supervisor here in the 1970s and the 1980s, so I spent a lot of time here, in fact," she said. "And as a matter of fact, I got my first haircut in the OR, because at three years old, I couldn't sit still in the beauty salon." Marcel gave a nearly-tearful speech, where she took time to thank her family, the hospital staff, and the patients she's worked with on the path to making this new center a reality.

Marcel passed the baton to a recent patient of the hospital's physical therapy unit, Rosemarie McBride, who had help with her artificial hip joint at the center. McBride said she was "literally blown away by the amazing physical therapy staff," and said that during her time in Ellenville Hospital, she labeled it the "most impressive physical therapy experience" she had ever had. Though she made a point to say that she wouldn't want anyone to need physical therapy of the type she had, she said that if you had to get it, "this is the place to come." She closed her remarks by saying, "you've come a long way, baby," referring to the unit's growth since its days as a woefully under-equipped wing of the hospital back in 2001.

"The only equipment she had was a bicycle," said Kelley of Marcel's early days in the unit. "She didn't even have a treadmill — she had to borrow that from cardiology."

After the dedication, Kelley said that he couldn't be happier with the new wing, a project which was completed on-schedule, and which is entirely bought and paid for.

"We have no debt as a result of this," said Kelley. "We've paid for it all in cash from one source or another — and that is pretty significant, as most places are burdening themselves with debt at a time when the economy is slowing down, we have been able to do this without shipping debt.

"We have a very conservative philosophy when it comes to finances," he continued, "where if we can't pay for it, we don't do it."

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