By Aman Batheja, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Texas
Jun. 22–FORT WORTH — After years of planning and construction, the JPS Patient Care Pavilion is finally ready to open. By Friday, the five-story patient tower — the first major addition to the taxpayer-supported hospital’s main Fort Worth campus since 1991 — should be fully operational.
But the move isn’t as simple as transferring equipment and staff across the street. For critical divisions like the emergency department, trauma operating rooms and the intensive care unit, even briefly discontinuing lifesaving care is not an option.
The situation has pushed John Peter Smith Hospital officials to design a plan for transferring the departments across the street without ever shutting them down.
“We won’t have any kind of interruption in our services in any way,” said Dr. Glenn Raup, senior emergency room director.
Hospital officials have been working for more than six months on details of the transition plan. Their efforts have included studying how other medical institutions nationwide have made similar transfers.
“There’s an art and a science to it,” Chief Operating Officer Ron Stutes said.
JPS has been hiring more staff to prepare to handle the tower’s extra capacity — a net gain of about 70 beds for the public hospital district, Stutes said. That extra staffing will also be crucial to making the move.
“We have staff that are coming in on overtime,” said Adonna Lowe, JPS’ chief nursing officer. “We’ve all waited for years for this building to be ready. There’s a lot of excitement and enthusiasm.”
Here’s how they plan to make the final move:
Friday-Monday: Seven state-of-the-art operating rooms will be opened in the new pavilion to handle some surgical procedures, according to JPS officials. Three trauma operating rooms will remain open in the hospital’s main campus until the emergency department moves.
Tuesday, 12 a.m.-7 a.m.: Movers and JPS staff will take the final pieces of equipment and supplies from the emergency department to the new facility.
Hospital officials chose this time because it is typically the slowest period of the week for the ER, said Dr. Rajesh Gandhi, JPS director of trauma services. JPS will still be able to give patients emergency care during that period, Lowe said.
“If everything goes as planned, we anticipate to have the ER area completely relocated by 7 or 8 in the morning,” she said.
New signs will be uncovered to direct patients in need of emergency care to the pavilion. JPS police and security officers will also be outside the hospital directing drivers, Stutes said.
Tuesday, 7 a.m.: The intensive care unit is scheduled to move to the new pavilion at about that time. Because the department oversees patients who need constant medical attention, transferring it requires the most delicacy.
ICU patients can’t stay in the hospital’s main campus because the hospital can’t keep two ICU staffs running at the same time, Raup said.
“It’s a matter of manpower,” Raup said. “You’ve got to have nurses take care of those patients minute to minute on a daily basis.”
Teams of three or four JPS workers — including two nurses and a respiratory therapist — will transfer most of the ICU patients into the new pavilion via a sky bridge over Main Street, according to hospital officials.
“We’ll take the most ill first, and the least ill will go last because the physicians may choose to transfer them to other parts of the hospital,” Lowe said.
Tuesday, 5 p.m.: The three remaining trauma operating rooms will shut down and move to the Pavilion. By Wednesday morning, all 10 of the pavilion’s operating rooms are expected to be up and running.
Wednesday and Thursday: The patients receiving “progressive care” — supervision and electronic monitoring without the intensity of the intensive care unit — will be transferred to single-occupant progressive care rooms on the fourth and fifth floors of the pavilion.
Friday: JPS officials expect the tower to be fully operational.
6 cool new technologies in JPS Patient Pavilion 1Operating rooms are outfitted with Stryker iSuite equipment, which links the rooms to one another and computer stations via a telemedicine system of audio and video. A voice-activated system can also activate other functions, such as lighting and surgical controls.
2A new 40-slice Siemens CT scanner adjacent to trauma rooms in the emergency department. The machine is faster and can create more-detailed images than former technology.
3New Mannington anti-microbial flooring throughout the tower to reduce infections.
4Mannington flooring in operating rooms allows small objects, such as needles, to be seen more easily than before.
5Stratus booms, made by Modular Services Co., in the ICU rooms have mechanical arms that pivot 350 degrees from the ceiling and power outlets, connectors for IVs and gases such as oxygen.
6Two-piece Stanley breakaway doors that can slide open one at a time or can both be opened with one motion to allow for quickly entering and leaving patient rooms.
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