St. Francis to break ground on 200 million dollar tower
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The new trauma emergency center and patient tower at St. Francis Hospital will include an emergency center, intensive care and surgery rooms and two helicopter pads. Courtesy
By SHANNON MUCHMORE World Staff Writer
Published: 9/28/2011 2:31 AM
Last Modified: 9/28/2011 7:39 AM
St. Francis Health System will break ground this week on an eight-story, $200 million patient tower and trauma center at its main campus.
The 500,000 square-foot project on the west side of campus at 61st Street and South Yale Avenue is 10 percent renovation and the rest new construction. It will include an emergency center, intensive care and surgery rooms and two helicopter pads. The construction will also replace the chapel and renovate the main lobby.
Completion date is expected for the summer of 2014.
As the aging population grows, more trauma care will be needed, St. Francis CEO and President Jake Henry said. Assuming federal health care reform mandates for insurance coverage go into effect in 2014, more people overall will be receiving care.
The hospital has looked at expanding its emergency care capability since 2002, he said.
"We think it's good for the community," Henry said. "We think it's going to give us the flexibility for what we know will happen."
It is the most expensive building project in St. Francis history and one of the largest investments the city has seen since 2003, hospital officials said.
Lynn Sund, senior vice president and chief nurse executive, said the new emergency center will make St. Francis capable of having a Level I Trauma Center, the highest certification available. It is currently Level II. The only Level I facilities in the state are in Oklahoma City.
The hospital is considering applying for the higher accreditation, she said.
"It is a topic of conversation," she said. "We have not put a timeline together."
Henry said the construction of the new tower will involve more than 700 workers, providing a stimulus of about $22 million. When the building is finished, St. Francis will bring in about 400 new employees.
The 85-room emergency center will have a separate area and entrance for families and is designed to care for about 300 patients a day. It currently sees about 230 a day.
It will include four resuscitation rooms, four triage stations and a decontamination room. Radiology rooms and a cardiac revascularization lab will also be located in the center, so patients won't have to be taken to other parts of the hospitals for those services.
"We'll be able to accommodate a lot of the patient needs right there," said David Wagner, senior vice president for facilities management.
In the event of a mass-casualty disaster, the center can expand the number of stations available and convert part of the ambulance bay to provide more services.
Sund said the hospital has been working on coordinating care among departments and buildings. It has also worked to reduce length of stay times and the rate of people who walk out before they receive treatment.
The new emergency center has been designed with these issues in mind, she said.
"We didn't want to take an old process to a new building," she said.
A team of physicians and administrators went on several site visits to see and discuss best practices for the emergency center. Mock rooms are now being created so that doctors can test the layout and other features before they are finalized.
The tower will have 150 ICU and surgery beds over five floors. They will have a wall of windows and are designed to keep patient, family and staff areas of the room from overlapping, Sund said.
The chapel will be more than 23,000 square feet and will have space for 180 worshippers. There will also be a new convent for the Religious Sisters of Mercy to live on campus.
The hospital is applying for LEED Silver Certification for the construction. The designation is awarded by the U.S. Green Building Council.
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