Parkview to Expand OB Unit at North Site: Many of Original Hospital?S Services Will Eventually Go to North Campus.

By Jennifer L. Boen, The News-Sentinel, Fort Wayne, Ind.

Jan. 21–A planned $19.5 million expansion to Parkview North Hospital will focus on increasing obstetrical and newborn intensive-care services, hospital officials said Friday. The proposal goes before the Allen County Board of Zoning Appeals on Feb. 8. This marks the next step in moving many services from Parkview’s hospital on Randallia Drive to the Parkview North campus just east of Interstate 69 and north of Dupont Road, said spokeswoman Karen Belcher. The expansion would double the number of beds at Parkview North to about 100. Although the land for the expansion already has the correct zoning, the scope of the expansion necessitates a trip before the board. “As we continue to do campus expansion for Parkview North, we’ll likely go before the (zoning) board for each of those projects,” Belcher said. The goal is to move the majority of Parkview Hospital’s services to the north campus, resulting in a major makeover to the Randallia site. “We anticipate having a community hospital (at the Randallia site) with up to 100 beds,” Belcher said. Parkview on Randallia currently has 575 beds. In its new form, it will maintain some obstetrical services, medical surgical beds and a 24/7 emergency department, but Belcher said the final configuration has not been finalized. How many beds Parkview North will end up with once all the expansions are complete remains uncertain, Belcher said. But the one currently up for approval would add 46,400 square feet to the existing building, which opened in January 2002. An innovative concept of private rooms for every baby in the neonatal intensive-care unit, or NICU, would be part of the new 30-bed NICU wing on the second level of the addition. Parents can sleep in the room with the child; the privacy will make it easier for moms to breastfeed babies and nurture them, especially important to the development of premature and sick infants. “Light and sound can be individually controlled for each baby,” Belcher said. “For an infant who may have been too ill or tiny to survive, the rooms allow for the family to be with baby and to grieve in private.” Parkview NICU doctors and nurses have visited several Iowa hospitals that have adopted the private-room, or “pod,” concept, she said. At present, no other Indiana hospital has that type of NICU. Dupont Hospital, Parkview North’s neighbor and a part of the competing Lutheran Health Network, which also includes St. Joseph Hospital, opened in April 2001. A $38 million construction and renovation project there is under way that will increase the number of beds from 90 to 120. ————

Hospital birth rates Five-year birth trends at Fort Wayne hospitals:

Hospital 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 Parkview Hospital* 3,303 2,350 2,098 1,900 1,727 Parkview North n/a 420 714 799 807 Lutheran Hospital 2,052 1,899 1,732 1,717 1,558 Dupont Hospital 944 1,614 1,700 1,876 2,118 St. Joseph Hospital 533 450 479 537 499 * Randallia Drive site

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