BERLIN – As it works to expand its services, Atlantic General Hospital is seeking a $100,000 commitment from the Town of Berlin.
On Monday, representatives of Atlantic General Hospital (AGH) provided their annual report to the Berlin Town Council. They ended their presentation with a request for $100,000 over five years.
“We’re bursting at our seams in our emergency room and we need help and we need money,” said Jack Burbage Jr., co-chair of AGH’s Campaign for the Future.
Atlantic General celebrates its 25th anniversary in 2018. Michael Franklin, president and CEO of AGH, said the hospital needed to address increased demand for services and update its facility.
“Our patient rooms and our patient care floors were designed 25 years ago,” he said. “Things have changed. We need to modernize our facilities to make them more up to date.”
He said the emergency room particularly needed attention. The space was designed to handle 28,000 visits a year but is now experiencing 38,000 visits a year.
The hospital employees close to 900 people and has a payroll of more than $48 million. Burbage pointed out that many of those employees lived in the Berlin area and spent money in town.
“It’s been a happy marriage between Berlin and the hospital,” he said. “We really need each other.”
Burbage said that he was hopeful that the town could provide AGH with $20,000 each of the next five years.
“More than anything else it’s the right thing to do,” he said. “It’s our hospital in our community that’s saving lives. I bet there isn’t one of you up there that doesn’t have a friend that hasn’t been touched by cancer.”
Mayor Gee Williams said he thought $100,000 was a reasonable request.
“That was the number I thought might be appropriate given our resources,” he said.
Williams said the town wasn’t “dirt poor” but that it had to meet a lot of different needs. As a community that supported health and wellness though he said he wanted to support the request.
“I hope we can find a way to meet the request,” he said.
Councilman Zack Tyndall asked if the hospital would be able to provide a tour to interested officials.
“I’d like to be able set a time that I can walk the hospital and really see what you’d like to improve, where you’d like to spend the money so I can vote a little more efficiently when budget time comes around,” Tyndall said.
Hospital officials said that would not be a problem. The council is expected to begin budget deliberations in April.
