“We are literally living in the building now,” she said, adding that, on Jan. 4, additional cardiac patients were scheduled to move and all cardiology services were to be operational in the new tower by Jan. 11.
“By the end of January, orthopedics will be in the building,” she said. Orthopedics will occupy the eighth and ninth floors of the building, with the eighth floor designated for joint care and the ninth for spine care.
Nearly three years in the making, the new patient tower adds 484,000 square feet to MVH, which is celebrating 120 years of existence. Adding 178 private patient rooms will allow the older part of the hospital to convert its semi-private rooms to private rooms with anticipated completion by the summer of 2011.
But size and more patient rooms are not the only features of the addition.
Consolidation of all cardiac services
“We have consolidated all of the cardiology diagnostic services, both inpatient and outpatient, in this one location — five floors of this building are all designated for heart care,” Burns said.
Outpatient testing is done on the first floor and includes stress testing, EKG and echocardiograms, as well as cardiac nuclear testing. Patients can park in one of the 44 parking spaces in the garage under the outpatient wing.
“The family waiting area is more spacious, but the philosophy of the hospital is that the patients will not be sitting here waiting — they will go straight back,” said Debbie Clary, RN.
Clary, a cardiac cath nurse was leading tours after the ribbon cutting.
“There is also an outpatient lab here so you can get lab work done here while you are having a procedure. It is all done in this area.”
“The second floor of the building is all devoted to what we would refer to as invasive cardiology procedures,” Burns said. “There are five cath labs and then we also have our cardio-vascular or cardio-thoracic surgery suites. There are three operating rooms — one of the things that is a unique design of this building. Typically you do not see cath labs and your open-heart surgery suite located in the same area. Here it is literally next door.”
The third floor is used for administrative offices and Burns said the fourth floor is the Coronary Intensive Care Unit.
“Then the sixth and seventh floors are coronary step-down or telemetry units,” she explained.
The step-down rooms have been designed to be converted to intensive care rooms if need be.
Patient surveys, caregiver input
What may be the most distinctive feature is the setup for the patient rooms. Each floor is divided into three wings with 12 patient rooms in each. There are three nursing stations (with its attendant supply facility) in each of the wings.
More than 300 clinical and non-clinical workers provided input into the design of the tower from the patient rooms to diagnostic areas to nursing units, Burns said.
“We call it purposeful design,” Burns said. “One of the things we are very proud of in the design of this building is the number of clinical staff as well as ancillary caregivers who have been involved in the design of the building and their workspaces. Who knows better than anyone on how do you create a workspace that allows the caregivers to give the very best care? The same people who deliver the care — the people at the bedside.”
Burns said that the patient rooms are called same-sided, same-handed, meaning that, if one piece of equipment is on the right side of the patient, then that equipment is located the right side in every patient room.
Patient surveys were reviewed to try to eliminate common patient complaints. One of the most common is noise. In the new tower acoustic tiles and 16-foot wide corridors help dampen the noise. Patient rooms and bathrooms are larger and all have large windows to admit natural light. Families can also spend the night on the large sleeper sofa and each room has a 32-inch flat-screen TV.
Patients also don’t like being moved around, so the rooms on the orthopedic floors were designed to permit equipment to be used in the patient’s room.
Technology
The stereotaxis unit is the first one in the Dayton area to go operational.
“The actual procedures will begin being used in May or June of 2011,” Burns said. She explained that the unit is used for patients with irregular heart rhythms. Magnets are used to help the cardiologist pinpoint the exact location of the irregularity.
A 16-slice nuclear scanner is also in use in the outpatient floor of the hospital.
VOCERA communications will be used by nurses instead of cell phones. The technology, which is already in use at Miami Valley Hospital South and in the main hospital’s Neonatal Intensive Care Unit and Emergency Room.
Green and local
Mary Boosalis, president and CEO of MVH, told the crowd attending the ribbon-cutting that “this is the first new hospital construction in Ohio to receive green certification.”
Boosalis said 76 percent of the construction debris was diverted from landfills through recycling and other techniques such as pre-fabrication.
“This building offers energy efficient 18 percent above the requirements of the building code. More than 75 percent of the materials were recycled.”
Burns said all the bathroom pods and the head walls and foot walls for every patient room, as well as overhead electrical and mechanical racks, were built off-site in a warehouse.
“What typically would have had several hundred different workers on site at one time was accomplished off-site with a minimum number of people,” she said.
“We have two green roofs on the building,” Burns added.
The green roofs — covered with vegetation — not only reduce the amount of energy needed for heating and air conditioning but, “they also capture pollution and prevent that pollution from running off into the storm sewers,” she said.
The hospital has two water features on the outside — a waterfall and a meandering brook. Both use recycled water.
Burns also listed light sensors to turn off unneeded lights as well as sensor-operated faucets to conserve water.
The hospital hopes to receive the second highest designation from the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, which is a program from the U.S. Green Building Council.
Burns also pointed out that the project used local firms whenever possible in the construction of the new tower.
“We really wanted to showcase Dayton,” she said. “So we did that by keeping $106 million of the $135 million construction cost local by using contractors within a 50-mile radius of Dayton,” she said. “Seventy-eight percent of the contractors were from within that radius. We wanted to support the local economy,” she said.
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