Paul Kirby reports in the Daily Freeman that the project underway to transform the former Benedictine Hospital campus in Kingston into a state-of-the-art medical facility is nearly finished. “The facility is nearing completion, and we are expecting to open later this year,” Chris Singleton, a spokesman for Westchester Medical Center Health Network, said in a statement. The network is the parent company of HealthAlliance of the Hudson Valley. Singleton said that once the hospital opens, complete with a new emergency room, the ER at the Broadway hospital campus will close. HealthAlliance Executive Director and Chief Medical Officer Michael Doyle had said in May construction on the $92.9 million upgrade, which includes a new emergency room, should be completed by fall. HealthAlliance Hospital will have a two-story, 79,000-square-foot structure comprising 175 new patient beds, mostly in private rooms; a new 25,000-square-foot emergency department, which will include cardiac observation and behavioral health services; and a 10-bed intensive care unit, along with a six-bed medical “stepdown” unit that will provide an intermediate level of care between the ICU and the new building’s medical-surgical wards. According to HealthAlliance, there will be a new birthing center with “ultramodern labor, delivery and postpartum rooms;” a new imaging department; and remodeled centers for ambulatory surgery, infusion therapy and endoscopy. In Hudson, Columbia Memorial recently stopped birthing services. Read the full story in the Daily Freeman.