Hospital starting $15M renovations

Big changes will be happening at Franciscan St. Elizabeth Health - Crawfordsville as they start a multi-million dollar renovation, which will include the construction of a brand new emergency room.

Franciscan Alliance is investing $15.3 million for the local hospital to construct the new emergency room, add a new CT scanner and move both the women’s center and physical and occupational therapy back into the hospital.

The emergency room alone will cost $10.4 million, but it’s something that Emergency Department Director Pam Miller has been waiting at least 10 years for.

“We have outgrown our emergency room,” Miller said. “Over the years, I’ve been in the emergency room for 20 years, and we have literally taken every square inch we can to make patient care areas. So I can’t even tell you how excited I am.”

Design work will begin today and last through the end of February, but there are certain logistical aspects of the design that are already in place.

Greg Harvey, material director for the hospital, said the new emergency room will be 19,000 square feet, which is approximately three times the size of current emergency room. The new facility will have between 16-18 patient beds. The 11 beds the current facility has is simply not working with the increasing number of patients coming through the emergency room each day.

“Our volumes from 2013 in the ER were at the high 30s low 40s,” said Vice President and Chief Operating Officer Terry Klein. “Now we’re at the 50s and 60s daily. And the acuity (severity) of those patients are much more severe than they were two years ago.”

“We do a really good job of getting people straight back to beds,” Miller said, “but when you’re full, you’re full. And once this new one comes in, we’re hoping to hardly ever be in a position where we can’t get a patient straight to a bed and they have to wait.”

In addition to more beds, the new facility will also have an ambulance garage so patients are not being transferred in and out in extreme weather conditions.

Groundbreaking on the new emergency room is dependent on the winter weather, but Klein hopes to start construction by the first week of March. The goal is to have the emergency room ready for action by the end of December.

The other big ticket item Franciscan St. Elizabeth Health - Crawfordsville is adding is a new CT scanner.

The hospital currently has only one CT scanner, and Director of Imaging Services Nancy Sayler said they can do more than 50 CT scans in one day.

The high usage of the one scanner can make it really heat up, which can be dangerous for the technology. But only having one scanner can also be very dangerous if someone in critical condition can not get access to it right away.

Right now, the room containing the CT scanner can be occupied for an hour if they are completing a test. While the room is in use, Sayler said “they have to defer any stroke alerts or any MVA (Motor Vehicle Accident) alerts that come in to Lafayette, and we totally lose out on all that patient care. And so the time has come to put in a second unit.”

The room with the new scanner will be closer to the new emergency room and will be faster, which will be more convenient and less uncomfortable for patients.

This CT scanner was part of a group purchase by Franciscan Alliance, which allowed the corporation to save $2.4 million. It’s still an expensive investment, but Executive Medical Director Tim Tansalle said it’s an important one.

“The commitment we’ve made to bring that second CT scanner here is really major,” Tanselle said. “For strokes in particular that would be true. If you have somebody in the scanner and somebody comes into the emergency room, you can’t proceed with what you might do to deliver the clot-busting sort of drugs until you’re sure the patient’s stroke is from a clot that needs to be broken open as opposed to bleeding in the brain. So it’s a step-wise fashion, and time makes all the difference. So that commitment to bring those kinds of resources here, it changes things. It’s a big financial commitment, but in the long run, it really makes a difference for the community.”

Renovation plans also include bringing physical therapy and occupational therapy back into the hospital. Klein said that move will result in a larger waiting room and a larger treatment area.

Women’s services are also being brought back over, and those include mammography, ultrasound and bone density.

Regarding women’s health, Tanselle said the hospital getting rid of the Maternity Care Center was a “big, big change for the community” that was not perceived very well. They still believe it is best for mothers and babies to have access to emergency neonatal services. However, Tanselle said the plans are to expand to three different physicians offering obstetric services throughout the week instead of one by this spring.

Klein knows that Franciscan St. Elizabeth Health - Crawfordsville, even with these service expansions and renovations, cannot serve everyone.

“We know our limitations,” Klein said. “We don’t treat everybody that walks in to our ER or is carried into our ER. We send them to Lafayette or to St. Vincent or to wherever is most appropriate and safe for the care of that patient. We can’t take care of everybody here. It would not be very responsible for us to do that.”

That being said, hospital officials agreed that, as more and more patients come to Crawfordsville for care, they want to serve and keep as many patients as they can.

“It’s important to us how the community perceives us and trusts us,” Klein said. “And we can measure that in various ways. Our volumes have increased. But what I look at is the acuity of that volume. Because really, trust is ‘I’m really sick. I need to go to a hospital. I’m going to Crawfordsville.’ We can easily determine that the acuity level of the patient, and the trust of the patients and their families, have really increased in the last 18 months.”