By Lindell Kay, The Daily News, Jacksonville, N.C.
Jul. 23–Whether a patient is in need of emergency care or going in for minor outpatient surgery, the new addition to Onslow Memorial Hospital should help ease the pain and the wait.
The new $40 million Emergency Services and Surgical Pavilion — a convergence of modern architectural design and modern medicine — was built in about five years without a single taxpayer dollar.
The public will get a chance on Thursday from 5 to 7 p.m. to tour the new facility, but elected officials and VIPs got a sneak peak Tuesday afternoon.
N.C. Lt. Gov. Bev Perdue toured the facility and spoke at the opening ceremony.
“There was a time when critics said we couldn’t have sophisticated, comprehensive medical care in Southeastern North Carolina,” she said. “We showed them wrong one more time.”
Perdue — director of geriatric care at Craven Regional Medical center early in her career — said OMH has managed to create a “caring and 21st century medical facility.”
The new pavilion’s wide hallways and spacious operating rooms — all freshly painted in calming colors like soft white and beige — are lit brilliantly and economically with skylights.
The new building has four operating rooms designed to keep cords and as many other objects as possible off the floors. Lights and booms holding other equipment are suspended from the ceiling. An integrated system of screens mounted on the walls will allow doctors to see diagnostic images of the patients.
Other areas include special examination rooms for obstetrics and gynecology and sexual assaults; a minor procedures room for stitches and setting bones; a decontamination room for removal of biological or chemical contaminants; an isolation room; and a secure room for jail inmates.
Each operating room is equipped with intergraded video systems allowing monitoring of operations and well lit by large, bright surgical lamps that give off light, but no heat.
Within a few steps, hospital staff can take a patient from the front door of the ER to a trauma bed to Radiology.
“It is a dream come true,” said Dr. Ed Piper, the president and chief of staff of OMH.
Piper said he is extremely excited about the new facility, and pleased it was paid for without “one taxpayer penny.” But the next phase — a patient tower — will be more than the hospital can afford on its own.
“It will be a time for the community to see a cause beyond ourselves,” he said during the opening ceremony.
The new pavilion is the first major construction at the hospital in more than 30 years.
“This is the most significant construction since 1975,” said Dr. Ed Piper, president and chief of staff at the hospital. He said the 1975 expansion cost $6 million while the latest addition cost $40 plus.
He said the hospital will now be able to take care of patients who were not being treated before.
“This new ER will drastically cut down on patients leaving without being seen,” he said. “The people of Onslow County deserve the best and they’re getting the best.”
ER patients will be routed by triage staff to either the minor emergency care section or another treatment area for more severe cases. A separate observation section has been created for patients who may be or likely will be admitted. Those patients can be moved to the observation area for up to 23 hours during the transition or while a determination is being made, freeing up emergency treatment rooms for others, hospital staff said.
Hospital officials say the new emergency room means state-of-the-art emergency care, shorter wait times for patients, enhanced facilities for triage and trauma care, and with more than double the space of the current ER patient comfort and privacy will be dramatically increased.
The surgical pavilion will offer state-of-the-art surgical care, more room to accommodate the latest technology, a comfortable waiting area for family, the connivance of having both pre-op and post-op care in one location, and a drive-up entrance for outpatients.
State Sen. Harry Brown, R-Onslow, said he sat on the hospital authority several years ago.
“This is huge,” he told The Daily News. “Not just for Onslow, but for the whole region. This prepares Jacksonville to take the next step in becoming a key player in North Carolina.”
Dr. Lennox Williams, OMH chief of staff, told the crowd of 200, according to an unofficial hospital staff estimate, that the new facility will help the medical workers at OMH fulfill their Biblical mandate of treating other people the way they expected to be treated.
“After all, we will all be patients one day,” he said.
Contact crime reporter Lindell Kay at [email protected] or 910-554-8534. Read Lindell’s blog at http://onslowcrime.encblogs.com.
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