Harrisburg Hospital receives $5 million toward emergency room expansion

Source:  The Patriot-News  (June 5, 2009)

Harrisburg Hospital is planning some major renovations including an expanded emergency room.

Harrisburg Hospital has landed its biggest donation ever, a $5 million gift from the Donald B. and Dorothy L. Stabler Foundation. It will go toward an expanded emergency room. The $27 million expansion, already under way, is expected to be finished in the spring of 2011.

Hospital officials say they are handling 58,000 ER visits per year in an ER built to handle 41,600. They expect the expansion to cure a "bottleneck" that can cause patients to wait up to two hours before beginning the check-process.

Donald and Dorothy Stabler started their foundation in 1966. Donald Stabler, who died in 1998 at 89, was an engineer and CEO of Stabler Companies Inc. of Susquehanna Township. Dorothy Stabler died in 2005 at 90.