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Contractors for Beebe Medical Center continue to work toward a spring 2008 completion of a $35 million expansion that will double the Emergency Department beds and add 62 medical-surgical and intensive care beds.
Riddled with miles of electronic cables, heating and air-conditioning ducts, and piping for medical gases and water, the new facility represents the latest thinking for dealing with a wide array of emergency and inpatient medical needs for the 21st century.
Specialized approaches to differing needs are most evident in the emergency room expansion:
• A decontamination room provides shower facilities between an outside entrance and an inner entrance to emergency facilities.
• Seven cardiac resuscitation rooms large enough to accommodate the teams of people needed to deal with such emergencies reflect the aging demographic of Delaware’s Cape Region – especially since 1988 when the last emergency room improvements were made.
• A separate section of the expanded emergency room serves as an observation unit with a dedicated nurses’ station. According to Emergency Department Nurse Manager Loretta Ostroski, the unit will be for observation of patients – such as emergency asthmatic cases – who may require a longer stay of up to 12 hours or so without admittance to the hospital.
• Off to itself is a soundproofed, padded room with flush walls and one-way glass for psychiatric patients who may require restraint or special care.
• Upstairs from the Emergency Department are two rooms with extra-large doors and extra-large shower areas. “Those are for bariatric patients – patients who are obese,” said Ostroski.
Are such rooms really needed?
“We had a patient come in within the last year who was 700 pounds,” said Beebe Medical Center President Jeff Fried. “People that large can’t get through conventional doorways or use standard-sized showers.”
In all, the new Emergency Department is being expanded from its current 19 beds to 32 beds in separated rooms and five more in the observation area. In addition to the new patient rooms, the expanded facility includes a needed supply storage room, a computerized tomography scan room and a conference room.
The hallways have also been made wide enough to accommodate overflow patients the hospital fully expects to receive over the next several years.
Patients resting on gurneys in the hallways of the current emergency room area – awaiting treatment – are a common sight.
“Our whole team of nurses was heavily involved with the design of our new space,” said Ostroski.
Kathy Cannatelli, nurse manager for the cardiac care unit (CCU) on the second floor above the new emergency room area, echoed Ostroski.
“Nursing was very involved with designing the flow and the processes that will be followed in these areas,” she said. In that intensive care and cardiac care area are four isolation rooms.
They have anterooms where doctors and nurses can gown and otherwise prepare to interact with patients with contagious diseases or those with suppressed immune systems.
Five cardiac surgery rooms with special observation windows are in the CCU to support the open-heart surgery operating rooms also on the medical center’s second level. Currently, the CCU is two floors above the cardiac surgery area.
Showing attention to the gentler details, Cannatelli and Ostroski pointed out the light wood facing on the nurses’ stations etched with marsh grasses to reflect the coastal area.
Fried noted that when the project is complete, the hospital will begin upgrading other areas to make them compatible with the décor and furnishings of the addition.
In the medical-surgical area on the third floor are the last semiprivate rooms that will ever be built at Beebe Medical Center. “New standards no longer allow anything other than private rooms,” said Fried.
Topping off the new addition is the multimillion dollar elevated helicopter landing pad.
Fried said the pad required additional engineering structure tied into the service elevator tower to handle the extra weight of the landing platform.
Law requires that the helipad be close enough to the medical center to preclude the need for ambulance transport of patients between the pad and the hospital.
With Beebe now offering cardiac surgery and its emergency room handling nearly 45,000 patient visits in the past 12 months, the expanded beds and facilities will be busy from the opening day.
Beebe faces challenge
“There is a significant shortage of doctors nationally,” said Beebe Medical Center President and CEO Jeff Fried. “We need an additional 37 between now and 2010. Currently we have 177. We’re currently spending $1.5 million annually to guarantee incomes to practices bringing in new doctors, so they can get up and running.”
Beebe Medical Center eyes the future
• In the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2007, Beebe Medical Center’s operating expenses exceeded $186 million with $93 million of that going into payroll, benefits and seasonal contractual services.
• Beebe Medical Center is also involved in construction of a 60,000-square-foot outpatient facility in Millville.
• Future construction projects in the design phase include a new Beebe School of Nursing to be built on the current site of the Lewes Convalescent Center. The convalescent center was sold to a private firm, which is building a new facility on Route 24 west of the Beebe Health Campus. The existing convalescent center will be razed to make way for the school.
The existing school will also be razed after it moves into its new facility. The nursing school building will eventually rise to four floors to house administrative and support-service offices.
• Also being eyed is new construction where the historic Shaw building now stands. Outdated rooms and offices in that area need to be replaced. Beebe Medical Center President and CEO Jeff Fried said the historic façade of the Shaw building would be retained and incorporated into that new construction.
Contact Dennis Forney at dnf@capegazette.com
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