Wait times a focus of Adena expansion

CHILLICOTHE — Improvements in access, wait times and educational opportunities are being touted as expected benefits when Adena Health System embarks on its $36.1 million expansion of Adena Regional Medical Center's emergency department and west entrance.

Approval of the project and the funding was granted earlier this week by the health system's board of trustees. Once ground is broken during the first quarter of next year, a drastic transformation of the west side of the hospital is in store. Preparation for the initial phase has already begun, with work under way on creation of a new 240-vehicle parking lot to handle patient and visitor vehicles when areas around the west entrance are occupied by construction equipment.

Nick Alexander, vice president of the medical center, said the purpose behind the expansion is to address issues of concern to patients and their families.

"The aesthetics is one thing, but the main reason we're doing this expansion and renovation is all around wait times, flow and getting people to the right level of care," he said. "So, while glass doors are nice and curtains (to individual patient spaces) should be gone, we really want to do something that gets us to better than the national benchmarks on wait times and time of care.

"We've actually partnered with a world-renowned emergency department designer and they're helping us to ensure when we do build this, we're building it to the best practices that are out there."

Before interior work begins on the new emergency department, a 40,000-square-foot expansion to the west and south of the current west entrance area — which opens up not only to the main body of the hospital itself but to the emergency department as well — will be undertaken. That includes a 7,700-square-foot expansion of the existing lobby area.

"(The lobby area will) include not only more of a non-congested feel, but one-point registration, so instead of having to have multiple registration desks, we could now have the possibility of doing that," Alexander said. "(The lobby will also have) an enclosed cafe, valet services, security presence and we'll still have a retail pharmacy, as well as the open feel."

The new west entrance will actually contain two main public entrances to the building as well as a new squad bay for emergency and police vehicles that will allow them to arrive three-wide and not run the risk of being blocked in by regular visitor traffic. The bay will allow direct access from the arriving squads to trauma care services.

The current emergency department will continue operating as is while the expansion to the building is constructed, then will be utilizing the expansion while interior renovations are conducted.

Bringing in some services not currently available in the emergency department is one way officials hope to be able to shorten a patient's visit to the unit.

"Not only will be be doing emergency services, we're bringing ancillary services into our emergency department with radiology equipment," Alexander said. "So on-site x-ray and CT so you don't have to travel down the hospital hallways. We'll have multiple patient care areas.

"Currently, when you walk into our ED, you're going to have a fast track into our exam rooms, but we'll be getting a clinical decision unit. We'll also have our exam rooms like anybody else, but we'll have areas like results waiting, family consultation, any other rooms that determine the different levels of care a patient may need."

Those multiple patient care units are expected to get patients out of the waiting room and into the initial stages of their care much more quickly, officials said.

Gone will be some of the features of the current emergency department that have troubled both patients and staff alike. For instance, patient care rooms will be larger in many cases than current ones and will not have curtains as entrances to the rooms. Hallways, which now often are filled with equipment and extra beds, will be cleared through use of designated spaces created to house that equipment.

"Everything (now) has that cluttered look because we just don't have anyplace to put (the equipment)," said Robin Berno, director of emergency services.

The current emergency department is split into basically two main pods separated by a solid wall. The renovation will take out that wall and create much more visibility into patient and staff areas across the department, which Berno said will also be better for staff engagement and department efficiency.

The expansion will consist of two stories, one of which will be occupied by the emergency department and one of which will contain, among other things, emergency department administrative offices, an expanded and updated staff locker room and space to further the educational component of the health system that has become more important to its operations in recent years.

"We want to have a space applicable to teaching the residents and ensure they have a good experience here at Adena," Alexander said. "If they stay in Chillicothe, if that fits them, or they choose to go to other institutions for their career path, they have the best training we can deliver. So that space for didactics, the medical resident library, workstations, study area, conference rooms is really key to our long-term strategy."

That strategy of establishing Adena as an educational destination for medical students also has included construction of the PACCAR Medical Education Center and Adena's involvement with the rehabilitation of the Carlisle Building, which serves as home to several students involved in medical education programs.

Alexander said the tentative timeline would have the project completed sometime around summer of 2018.