BANGOR – Despite challenging financial times and shifting health care priorities, the need for high-quality medical care never ends. At St. Joseph Healthcare, President and CEO Sister Mary Norberta said Tuesday that the organization plans to make some major improvements and expansions in the next few years that will affect the in-town hospital as well as the St. Joseph Healthcare Park on outer Broadway.

Sister Norberta, 71, also indicated she is preparing to step aside as the hospital’s top administrator, perhaps as soon as next year, though she plans to retain her position as the head of the overarching parent corporation.

One of the organization’s bricks-and-mortar priorities is an expanded and relocated intensive care unit, Sister Norberta said. The existing seven-bed unit is cramped and poorly laid-out, she noted, as well as being sited on a different level from the surgical suites where most ICU patients come from. A new 12-bed unit will most likely be added to the rear of the hospital and be connected directly to the surgical areas, Sister Norberta said.

Also high on the agenda is a new building at the Broadway health care park to house some outpatient services such as pulmonary and cardiac rehabilitation as well as physician offices. The four existing structures at the site house a diabetes and nutrition center, a women’s mammography center, home care and hospice offices, a breast care and osteoporosis center, a primary care practice and some administrative offices.

Other projects in the planning stage include an expansion of the women’s center in the health care park, more space in the hospital for outpatient chemotherapy and other intravenous infusions, an expansion and update of the emergency department, and a parking garage.

Wayne Woodford, chief operations officer, said it’s too early in the planning process to have an estimate of the cost of the project. St. Joseph Healthcare is in sound financial shape, he said, even though it is owed more than $3 million from the state’s Medicaid program.

“We have the wherewithal to weather the storm,” he said, but the delayed payments will become an issue when it’s time to finance the improvements. Woodford said it’s likely St. Joseph will seek approval for the expansion and renovation from the state health planning office in the next two or three years.

Other changes in the wind include Sister Norberta’s plan to name a new chief executive officer for the hospital in 2008.

“My biggest challenge will be to stay out of the day-to-day issues at the hospital,” she said. She intends to retain her CEO status at St. Joseph Healthcare and at the organization’s other affiliates, which include the hospice and home care division, a real estate management division and a currently inactive for-profit entity known as the Strauss Corp.

She also said St. Joseph Healthcare will strengthen its administrative ties with the Massachusetts-based Covenant Health Systems, a Catholic health care organization that counts several other Maine institutions among its affiliates, including St. Mary’s Regional Medical Center in Lewiston and St. Andre’s Health Care Facility in Biddeford. Affiliation provides administrative support and cost efficiencies, Sister Norberta said, noting that virtually every hospital in Maine is now linked to a larger organization.

Sister Norberta said hospitals everywhere must confront the same challenge – to provide high-quality, cost-effective care to as many people as possible in a heavily regulated environment that traditionally has promoted competition rather than collaboration. In Bangor, she noted, a recently announced agreement among St. Joseph Healthcare, Eastern Maine Healthcare Systems and Penobscot Community Health Care makes collaboration on some levels more feasible.

The three Bangor-area health care facilities will host a local planning meeting later this summer, she said, to generate ideas on how best to serve residents’ health care needs.