Cincinnati health system TriHealth bought in March 2012 the former Butler County Medical Center on Hamilton-Mason Road. The facility has since been renamed Bethesda Butler County TriHealth Hospital, for its affiliation with TriHealth’s Bethesda North Hospital.
The medical center is a 10-bed hospital with general surgery and outpatient services, such as a sleep center, physical therapy, medical imaging and doctor offices.
Immediately upon announcing the purchase last year, TriHealth said it planned to add an emergency department and expand cardiology and cancer services.
Construction crews with Duke Realty are preparing the new emergency department for a Feb. 1 grand opening. The project is an approximately $3 million investment, according to city building permit records.
“It’s taking us from a surgical hospital to a full-fledged medical hospital,” said Chuck Brown, Bethesda Butler County’s site administrator.
An additional 10,500 square feet have been added to building 3075 for the emergency department. The emergency department occupies a total 11,800 square feet, including already existing shell space in the building, Stiles said. There are two entrances, one for public drop-offs and one for ambulances, and it was built adjacent to a new laboratory and the hospital’s surgical suite.
The emergency department building is complete. The next steps are to fill it with medical equipment, supplies, furniture and computer equipment. Twenty-eight staff were hired to work the emergency department, the majority of whom start work Jan. 7, Brown said.
The emergency department consists of 17 patient bays with stretchers for examination, situated around a centralized nursing station, Stiles and Brown told JournalNews/Middletown Journal on a tour of the new facilities.
Among the 17 patient examination areas are one private patient room, an isolation room with negative air pressure for patients with airborne illnesses, a resuscitation treatment room for patients in need of more acute care, and a decontamination room with a separate outside entrance. Several rooms are designed for elderly patients, with muted yellow walls and indirect lighting.
As an ambulatory care center, Bethesda Butler County’s emergency services can treat illnesses, orthopedics and general surgery patients, such as people with appendicitis or hip fractures, Stiles and Brown said. It does not have a maternity unit to deliver babies or have the ability to treat trauma cases, such as heart attacks. However, patients can be stabilized for transportation to other hospital trauma centers if need be. Part of the renovation/expansion work going on at Bethesda Butler County is to put in a helipad for medical helicopters for that reason.
The emergency department transforms the Hamilton medical center campus, Brown said.
“It puts a physician onsite 24 hours. It creates a need to run an imaging lab 24 hours to support the ED,” Brown said. “We’ll have an on-call staff.”
Also, a new laboratory means staff can now process lab tests — previously, medical workers could only draw specimens.
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