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Catholic Health opened a new patient care pavilion today at its Good Samaritan University Hospital in West Islip, New York.
The $500 million project features an emergency department with 75 treatment bays, dedicated spaces for adult and pediatric patients, a secure holding area and 36 medical-surgical rooms. Each medical-surgical room is equipped with a private bathroom, video conferencing capabilities and smart-room technology to help increase patient comfort, Catholic Health said in a release.
The project is designed to help staff respond quicker to trauma, stroke, cardiac and other emergencies through an expanded ambulance bay and direct vertical access from the emergency department to the pavilion’s 16 operating rooms, two of which are hybrid surgical suites, the company said.
Stakeholder input was key to the changes, which put a premium on patient privacy, Christine Flaherty, Catholic Health’s senior vice president of real estate development and facilities management, said in an interview. Before construction, the hospital created full-scale mock-ups and called on physicians, nurses and patient advocates to help shape the facility’s design, layout and workflow.
Ensuring patient-centered care was “an important component of how the planning was done for this project,” Flaherty said. “Based on this building and future buildings that we might be looking at in all cases, the more private patient rooms we can effectuate, the better for our care teams, for the patients and their families and loved ones.”
Reflecting broader healthcare trends
The healthcare industry is moving more non-emergency and less-invasive care to outpatient settings, according to a report CBRE released Tuesday.
In the Good Samaritan University Hospital expansion, “We’re trying to balance that trend and less visits to the hospital itself,” Flaherty said. “Both of those are major strategic focuses for Catholic Health: ensuring that we have an ambulatory footprint within the communities that we serve, as well as making sure that we’re able to effectuate modern, private patient rooms wherever feasible and financially viable for our campuses.”
These private patient rooms have nearly tripled in size from those in the legacy building, the organization says.
To improve the hospital’s operational efficiency, upgrades include vertical integration of building systems and greater utility efficiency, including a dedicated mechanical floor for mid-building operations.
“Those are definitely things that we looked at very carefully, being able to swiftly get to things that you’re maintaining so that you can really ensure you never go down and you’re always able to switch to other units,” Flaherty said. “If you’re doing maintenance on units, that results in productivity for everyone in the building.”
The dedicated mechanical floor, directly adjacent to the operating room platform, is also roofed so that technicians do not have to be exposed to the elements in bad weather to work on mechanical systems.
“That actually is proven to be a much better way to service and maintain and sustain the equipment for a longer period of time which, frankly, is what we want to do,” Flaherty said. “We really want to get the most out of every single investment we’ve made from an infrastructure perspective.”
To improve the patient experience, the upgrades also include natural light elements, noise reduction and commemorative spaces.