Marlborough Hospital seeks special permit for emergency department expansion and proton therapy center

Marlborough City Council on May 5 heard a public hearing on a special permit application from Marlborough Hospital and UMass Memorial Realty Inc. seeking an 8,000-square-foot emergency department expansion, a second-floor $6,000,000 multidisciplinary clinic and a proposed $40,000,000 proton therapy center at the Marlborough Hospital campus.

Attorney Brian Faulk, representing the applicant, described the project to the council and the public. “This is an application for a special permit for several exciting projects at Marlborough Hospital,” Faulk said, and he outlined the proposed expansions and the city approvals the project will need.

The project would more than double emergency department treatment rooms from 13 to 27 and add two bays that can combine for larger cases and two trauma rooms, Faulk said on the record. John Kelly, who identified himself as “the chief nursing officer and chief operating officer at Marlborough Hospital,” told the council the ED has grown from roughly 22,000–23,000 visits a year when he started to “we're just under 30,000” visits now and that overcrowding has led to patients sometimes being treated in hallways.

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