By Joe Kellard
"This move has been the most enormous effort we've undertaken," said Yvette Mooney, senior vice president of patient care services and co-chair of the patient move committee. "More than 40 people alone on our committee, including nurse managers and directors, are heading up different aspects of this move."
Michael Rodriguez, SNCH's director of environmental services and transportation, who co-chairs the committee with Mooney, is experienced in logistical, clinical and communications plans for similar large-scale moves at hospitals, particularly in Brooklyn, but none on the scale to occur on March 25. "This is a much, much bigger move than I've ever done before," Rodriguez said.
The detailed plan provides a sequentially timed map that includes the various coordinating exit and receiving teams that will move particular patients down specific corridors, elevators and bridges connected the existing and new wings. Cardiac patients, for example, will be taken off their monitors in their rooms and hooked up to mobile, battery-powered monitors to facilitate their transport to the new wing, where they will be put on state-of-the-art wireless monitors. Patients who recently had surgery will be moved to the north wing's first-floor, 36-bed post-surgical unit, and mothers and their newborns will travel together in wheelchairs to the 36-bed maternity unit on the third floor.
"Depending on moms and labor, maternity is going to have the opportunity to move when they say they want to," Mooney said when detailing the plan. "The nurses will call the shots."
Like Mooney, William Ulrich, SNCH's vice president of administration, has been with the hospital for nearly 30 years, and has never been involved with a move of this magnitude. "This is a major move," he stressed.
While Ulrich noted that the easiest part of the move, planning for which began in earnest six months ago, has been the staff's enthusiasm to move into the new wing, the most difficult part has been "making sure we don't overlook any details," he added.
To better ensure that oversights are eliminated, but particularly to get a better grasp of the average times needed for the various transports, Rodriguez ordered and designed a mock move, staged and successfully executed last Saturday with a sample of patients and employees acting as patients who were transported on everything from wheelchairs to stretchers.
"It's a whole big plan that involved a lot of people and volunteers from various departments," Rodriguez said.
"The plan has gone smoothly from day one, but if you don't have a smooth move, all of that doesn't matter," Ulrich said.
Ulrich estimates that as much as 85 percent of the equipment, such as beds and medical machines, will already be installed in the new wing prior to the move. Even whole departments, such as human resources, will be moved into the enlarged lobby level beforehand.
"We're taking every precaution with this move to make patient comfort our first priority," Ulrich explained. "We want to minimize the impact on patient discomfort." Asked about the worst that could happen, Ulrich said with confidence, "We're prepared for all eventualities."
South Nassau's renaissance
The north wing addition is part of SNCH's $160 million revamp, dubbed the Renaissance Project, which began in 1998 and involved various projects. At the time, admissions to the hospital totaled nearly 90,000 annually, and have since more than doubled, totaling approximately 215,000 in 2004. These figures include the 13 offsite specialty facilities SNCH operates across the South Shore, from Valley Stream to Oceanside to Bellmore.
In part, SNCH wanted to build the north wing addition to increase the number of patient beds from 380 to the licensed maximum of 435, and to upgrade and renovate the hospital's in-patient care units. The new wing will unite these units, which are otherwise scattered throughout the existing building. Unlike the seemingly maze-like layout in SNCH and many other hospitals, the new facility has a uniform four-floor structure, and areas in the existing wings separate from their unit will come together in the new wing, such as the two C-section surgery rooms in the maternity unit.
"We wanted to create a warmer, patient-friendly environment," Ulrich said.
To this end, over a third of the new beds will be private, up from 12 percent in the existing building, with every maternity room being private and sporting a hotel-like décor, with dark hardwood floors, cherry wood cabinets, cream-colored wallpaper and moss green cushioned chairs.
The new wing will also have a 72-bed medical-surgery unit, a 36-bed in-patient behavioral health unit on the top floor and a lobby-level conference center with three separate screening rooms. The wing will give the hospital a total of 630,000 square feet, and the hospital has expanded its combined parking spaces from about 870 to 1,114.
SNCH, which opened in 1928, will fund the $160 million Renaissance Project through a combination of about $112 million in long-term debt and $48 million from funds in retained equity from operations and donations, said SNCH President and CEO Joseph Quagliata.
Meanwhile, the larger units to remain in the existing building are the new emergency room, expanded from about 8,000 square feet to about 20,000 (also part of the overall Renaissance Project), laboratories, radiology, offices and some patient beds. As to the hospital's plans with the wings to be vacated, Ulrich said, "We're in the process of planning that right now."
Quagliata said that with the Renaissance Project, SNCH is headed toward "being recognized as the dominant hospital force on the South Shore on Nassau Count ... At the end of the day, people can stay proximate to their home and get the care that they need by caregivers every bit as good as they are anywhere in the world."
A formal ribbon cutting for the new wing is planned for April 30.
Comments about this story? JKellard@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 287.
