June Meeting at JSUMC

As Chapter President Bill Ryan noted on page 1, we couldn’t get a tour of the new buildings at Jersey Shore. Our speaker, Kathryn Collins, vice president of Campus Planning and Construction Management at Jersey Shore, said we could learn more from the slide show she gave us. But the tour, now promised for August, will make it real.

Kathy has had a “really long” career in health care, and has been working on the expansion of JSUMC for the last four and a half years, so she’s well qualified to tell us about it. She gave us a shortened version of the orientation that will be given to the staff and volunteers at JSUMC.

A yellow butterfly fluttered about on some of the slides she projected from her computer. The butterfly - as it arises from a cocoon - is the mascot of the Transformation Project.

The new environment is designed to provide a healing environment for patients and their families, and a healthy environment for team menbers, volunteers, and the medical and dental staff - some of whom have twelve-hour shifts!

Some changes have already taken place in the last two years, including a new pathology lab (a.k.a. “the morgue”), additional cardiac cath labs, new blood test labs, and a larger pediatric unit. In the Rosa Pavilion, which is over 35 years old, the in-patient behavioral health unit was just renovated.

The hospital can’t spread out - its 25 acres are bounded on all sides by existing development. Within that area it had 600,000 square feet of floor space; the new project will bring it to almost a million square feet.

The new buildings are on the north side of the JSUMC campus. There’s no third floor on either building, to allow vertical space for pipes, tubes and cables. A loop road will go around the whole campus. Besides the new parking garage, there will be free surface parking for visitors near every building, and valet parking will still be available.

The Northwest Pavilion will have an expanded Emergency Department with digital imaging equipment on the first floor, new patient rooms on the second, fifth and sixth floors, no third floor, and the fourth floor is a shell for future growth.

A new main entrance on the south side of the Northwest Pavilion will have a relocated gift shop and a time capsule to be opened in 25 years. The old main entrance will be deemphasized.

The Kurr Atrium will bring all the buildings together, with terrazzo floors, a suspended sculpture, a baby grand piano, a buffet for salads, sandwiches and coffee, a comfortable seating area, a “you are here” campus map, and an escalator to the second floor and the parking garage.

The 970 car Harbor Parking Garage, to the east, is complete and team members are using it. A heliport is on top and a new central utility plant is on the east end of the first two storeys. The entrance to the Emergency Department will be on the first floor. Physicians will park on the first floor, visitors (for $2.00) on the second floor, team members above.

The long north-south corridor connecting the new buildings with the old will have a history wall, a donor recognition wall, a view of a new healing garden, and a six-passenger golf cart to carry people through it.

The diagnostic and treatment building has been completed and has been occupied since last December. The first floor will have an expanded employee cafeteria. Sterile processing is on the second floor. A shell of a new cardiac intensive care unit will be filled in when more money comes in. The top floor has six new operating rooms: three cardiac, three orthopedic. One of the cardiac rooms is a unique “hybrid room” combining a cath lab and a surgical facility: if imaging shows a need for surgery the patient only has to be moved a few feet.

Patient rooms will have a new look dictated by evidence-based design principles to improve healing, some of which were tested on the fifth floor of the Mehandru Pavilion (“Tower 5”). All rooms are private, with art on the walls, big windows, temperature control, sensor-controlled sinks and lights in the bathrooms and unrestricted visiting hours. Clear glass panels look out on the corridor so doors can stay closed. Carpets and acoustic tile in the corridors will reduce noise. Big decentralized nursing stations will each serve twelve beds.

New technology will include proximity badges that don’t have to be swiped to open doors, a nurse call system integrated with the nurse’s portable phone, a bariatric lift in each nursing unit to help move heavy patients, kiosk registration for returning patients, and tracking systems for patients and for equpment.

The project is designed for energy efficiency and recycling and it’s registered for LEED Certification (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) given by the US Green Business Council - they’re going for the gold!

We’re looking forward to the tour in August.