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PITTSBURG —
Construction of the third floor women’s center at Via Christi Hospital is in full swing, officials said Friday.
Demolition of the interior is about 70 percent complete, and construction crews have already begun installing wall studs in the west and north wings. In the south wing, workers continue to knock down office walls with sledge hammers and crowbars.
Work officially began in June after months of preparation, said Gary Falcetto, the hospital’s director of engineering.
“We finished phase three today,” Falcetto said.
The floor originally housed three patient care wings, one of which was for pediatric care, and offices for education, respiratory therapy, social work and the hospital’s sleep laboratories. When the $8 million project is completed — estimates put the end date at around April 2012 — the center will feature two new labor and delivery rooms, bringing the total to five, two new triage rooms, a designated waiting area, and enhanced central fetal monitoring, 13 postpartum/gynecological rooms with a spa-type feel, Cesarean section rooms and a nursery. The whole floor will receive two-pane windows to help regulate heating and cooling costs, as will the second and fourth floors.
The process doesn’t just involve the third floor, though. As they work on a wing, the crews must close off the same wing on the second floor so they have access to piping and electrical cables. Crews saved the south wing for last because it is directly above the current women’s unit, which is more heavily-trafficked than other wings on the second floor, Falcetto said.
“We wanted to start with the other wings so we could make sure we understood the process,” Falcetto said. “We’re a lot more efficient now.”
That doesn’t mean there haven’t been hang-ups, but Public Relations Director Michael Hayslip said nurses and staff have done a remarkable job of identifying potential problems and maneuvering around them.
“They’ve been involved in the whole process,” Hayslip said. “They’ve done a great job anticipating what we’ll need.”
The current women’s unit was opened in 1971, and while that doesn’t mean it has ever been unsafe, it hasn’t been state-of-the-art for a long time. The new center will include both technological and personnel improvements. From a technological perspective, nurses will be able to keep an eye on multiple babies from a central fetal monitoring station rather than watching one at a time from their bedside. The center also will employ a lactation consultant instead of a lactation specialist, which will boost its quality of care.
Construction of the third floor women’s center at Via Christi Hospital is in full swing, officials said Friday.
Demolition of the interior is about 70 percent complete, and construction crews have already begun installing wall studs in the west and north wings. In the south wing, workers continue to knock down office walls with sledge hammers and crowbars.
Work officially began in June after months of preparation, said Gary Falcetto, the hospital’s director of engineering.
“We finished phase three today,” Falcetto said.
The floor originally housed three patient care wings, one of which was for pediatric care, and offices for education, respiratory therapy, social work and the hospital’s sleep laboratories. When the $8 million project is completed — estimates put the end date at around April 2012 — the center will feature two new labor and delivery rooms, bringing the total to five, two new triage rooms, a designated waiting area, and enhanced central fetal monitoring, 13 postpartum/gynecological rooms with a spa-type feel, Cesarean section rooms and a nursery. The whole floor will receive two-pane windows to help regulate heating and cooling costs, as will the second and fourth floors.
The process doesn’t just involve the third floor, though. As they work on a wing, the crews must close off the same wing on the second floor so they have access to piping and electrical cables. Crews saved the south wing for last because it is directly above the current women’s unit, which is more heavily-trafficked than other wings on the second floor, Falcetto said.
“We wanted to start with the other wings so we could make sure we understood the process,” Falcetto said. “We’re a lot more efficient now.”
That doesn’t mean there haven’t been hang-ups, but Public Relations Director Michael Hayslip said nurses and staff have done a remarkable job of identifying potential problems and maneuvering around them.
“They’ve been involved in the whole process,” Hayslip said. “They’ve done a great job anticipating what we’ll need.”
The current women’s unit was opened in 1971, and while that doesn’t mean it has ever been unsafe, it hasn’t been state-of-the-art for a long time. The new center will include both technological and personnel improvements. From a technological perspective, nurses will be able to keep an eye on multiple babies from a central fetal monitoring station rather than watching one at a time from their bedside. The center also will employ a lactation consultant instead of a lactation specialist, which will boost its quality of care.
The renovation also will allow the hospital to provide a service it hasn’t in the past.
“When we have babies born, a lot of times if they are premature, they are delivered elsewhere,” Julianna Rieschick, the hospital’s vice president of patient care services.
“After a time, they reach ‘feeder grower’ status, which means they just need to be monitored, but are stabilized and are growing fine. We will have the ability to keep those here, so the parents aren’t traveling so far to take care of their child. Having a baby is stressful as it is. The last thing we want parents to do is to travel. We want them to take care of the baby here, and that way we can take care of the community.”
The new women’s’ center is one of a of multiple modernizing projects Via Christi has recently undertaken. Starting eight years ago the hospital built a new outpatient area on the west end, which includes the emergency room, Via Christi Heart Center and QuickCare. It added a new fifth-floor intensive care unit in 2006 and a cardiac step-down unit — literally, a step-down from intensive care — in 2009. Last year it completed an $800,000 renovation of the main lobby, added at $2.7 million linear accelerator to the cancer center and $1.5 million in new technology to the heart center. There also are plans to renovate the first floor chapel.
Dewitt & Associates of Springfield, Mo., is the main contractor for the project.
Andrew Nash contributed to this report.
