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January 31, 2002                                             Ron Hallman 388-4744

PORTER HOSPITAL CAMPAIGN EXCEEDS $4 MILLION MARK

MIDDLEBURY--The 75th Anniversary Campaign for Porter Hospital has surpassed the $4 million mark  with $4,016,480 in commitments as of the end of January.  The campaign was launched in June of 2000 with a pledge of $250,000 from the PMC Auxiliary. During the past 18 months, more than 700 individual community members, service organizations and businesses pledged an additional $2,758,480 to the campaign.  The final $1 million was pledged by Middlebury College in January of last year.

"We are sincerely and deeply gratified by the incredible response from our community to this campaign during some pretty challenging economic times," said PMC President, James L. Daily.  "I personally met with dozens of individual donors, business leaders and service groups during the past 18 months, and it was truly remarkable to see the commitment and support for Porter Hospital and this extremely important construction project."

Daily expressed particular appreciation to the volunteers who helped to raise these funds during the major gifts portion of the campaign, as well as to the hospital physicians who gave approximately $400,000 in support of the project. Individual members of the Porter Medical Center boards and PMC Auxiliary Board also pledged more than $200,000 to the campaign.

The capital campaign will support a $14 million construction project, which will address a variety of serious and chronic facility issues and enhance patient care areas for surgical and maternity services Daily said.

Although there are still some proposals pending and a few donors still planning to make a commitment to the campaign, administrators and board members will now be able to turn their attention to finalizing the project design and seeking regulatory approvals including a Certificate of Need from the State of Vermont, Daily added.

"We must now move forward with the next major phase of our work which is to meet throughout the spring and summer with legislators, regulators and anyone who has influence over the CON process, " Daily said. "Concurrently, we will be working internally with our architect and construction manager to put the final touches on our plans so that we will be fully prepared to submit them with the CON application later this year."

Daily hopes that if all goes well with the final design preparation and regulatory review, construction of the project will begin in 2003.