UPMC Horizon's Greenville hospital is getting a new look.

The nonprofit health-care provider unveiled a $3.1 million expansion and remodeling to its emergency room, ambulatory surgery suite and same-day surgery unit.

Construction on the second floor ambulatory suite, which offers out-patient examinations where no recovery time is needed, is nearly complete and is expected to open by the end of the month.

Plans for the emergency room call for it to double in size from its current 5,000 square feet. Work on a new wing has begun and will be completed in phases by December 2002.

Horizon took years to plan the expansion and remodeling, said Ron Thompson, Horizon's program director of support services. While Horizon had asked for employee input on construction projects in the past, this time an effort was made to get entry-level staff involved.

"Sometimes something like if a door has a left or right swing can be important,'' Thompson said.

At the heart of the emergency room expansion is allowing for better patient privacy. There will be 12 treatment rooms separated by solid walls vs. the current seven treatment rooms partitioned by curtains.

New treatment rooms will have glass facing a nursing station so the staff can better monitor patients and allow for easier access, Thompson said.

"We're making it as user-friendly as possible,'' he said.

Other new features in the emergency room are an expanded waiting room and a chemical decontamination room. Also there will be two new entrances, one for patients and another for ambulances.

The current emergency room will remain open while construction is under way, but the existing entrance will close and be replaced by a temporary one. The canopy sign at the emergency room will be moved to the temporary entrance.

Also, the same-day surgery department will move to temporary quarters on the first floor until the project is complete and at that point will be moved back to its new location on the second floor. Same-day surgery offers outpatient procedures which don't require overnight stays but where some recovery time is needed. When complete, the same-day surgery unit will have 29 beds compared to the current dozen.

"Other than the cafeteria, same-day surgery is the only area of the hospital that has gone untouched since 1993,'' Thompson said.

The ambulatory surgery suit will offer a bronchoscopy room, for viewing lungs, and a cystostopy room, for X-ray studies of the body with a catheter and contrast material.

Throughout the unit, Horizon made an effort to have eye-pleasing color schemes with comfortable furniture, Thompson noted.

"We're trying to make it less institutional and more homey,'' he said.

Anderson Construction Co., Reynolds, is the contractor, while IKM Corp., Pittsburgh, is the architect.

This is the first construction project started at Horizon's Greenville hospital since it merged with the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center in 1998. Horizon also owns and operates a hospital in Farrell.

Since the merger, Greenville area residents expressed concern that all of the new money pumped into Horizon had gone to the Farrell hospital. Horizon absorbed the Farrell hospital in 1992.

Kathryn Lima, vice president of community development for Horizon, said the organization was well aware of Greenville's concerns. However, she said, the manner of where funds were funneled was a twist of timing. Prior to merging with UPMC, millions of dollars were spent in improvements at the Greenville hospital.

"But Shenango (Farrell) hadn't had anything done to it since 1981,'' she said.