What remains to be done?

“The simple truth is the Hospital building as it stands today is in the final stages of its useful life”
– Thomas Miller & Partners LLC, Master Planners, April 2003

A commitment to excellence is all well and good, but that passion can only be maintained for so long when your roof constantly leaks, the inside room temperature fluctuates with the wind, and duct tape is standard issue for all department heads. What we are left with today is an extraordinarily dedicated corps of health care professionals committed to providing the best possible health care in a building that is literally beginning to melt around them. As a community, we must face the fact that it is now way past time for us to deal with the deteriorating physical condition of our hospital.


“…anyone who needs convincing on this point can put all doubt to rest with a half-hour tour of the sprawling, leaking, outmoded facility in which the hospital’s dedicated staff now labors so heroically to provide quality health care to the people of the Island.”
– Vineyard Gazette, Editorial, June 2003

In the 30 years since the Hospital was last rebuilt in 1974, the rate of growth and change on the Island has been stunning. The year-round population has gone from 6,000 to 15,000 and the summer population has increased from 40,000 to 105,000. During that same time frame, there has been not one, but two additions to the Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School. The towns of Oak Bluffs and Chilmark have built brand-new elementary schools. Edgartown, Tisbury and West Tisbury have all added new additions to their schools – multiple times. We have added a new ferry slip, rebuilt the dock in Oak Bluffs, demolished, rebuilt and greatly enlarged the Steamship Authority terminal in Vineyard Haven and are now planning for an expansion of the ferry terminal in Oak Bluffs. Finally, we have recently torn down and reconstructed an entirely new terminal building at Martha’s Vineyard Airport. Yet shockingly, the Hospital remains untouched. We cannot put this off any longer – the time to rebuild our hospital is past due.
Toward that end, we have been hard at work doing the comprehensive programmatic and master planning study required to move forward. We have worked with professional health care planners, our own Island healthcare providers and the community we serve to come up with a road map for our future hospital. We believe we have come up with a plan that is collaborative, functional, patient-centered, operationally efficient, aesthetically compelling, and adaptable and flexible enough to allow for future changes in health care trends and technology.

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