After months of delays and a pandemic, the county hospital opened part of its new, multi-million dollar facility, with plans to eventually move the COVID-19 unit that christened the space back to the main hospital building.
A portion of Johnson Memorial Hospital’s new outpatient services center opened this week inside the new building at Johnson Memorial’s main campus in Franklin, the product of a years-long, $47 million expansion to add a new emergency department and outpatient services center in place of an older part of the hospital, which was demolished in 2018, on the east side of the medical campus.
Construction began more than two years ago, and the completed building houses a brand new 17,400-square-foot emergency department, with a new ambulance drive and bay, and a 33,000-square-foot outpatient services center, such as radiology and laboratory services.
"We were becoming cramped in the old building, so this does give us more space," said Dr. David Dunkle, president and CEO of Johnson Memorial Health.
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Patients can now visit the Breast Care Center, or get labs and medical imaging done in the outpatient services section on the north side of the new building.
"If your physician offices ordered labs … you would get labs drawn in the new building. If your doctor ordered a chest x-ray, or you need an MRI done for orthopedics or maybe your knee, that will all be done out of the new building," Dunkle said.
The hospital also plans to move its wellness program, diabetes education, cardiac rehab and the coagulation clinic to the second floor of the new building in the near future, he said.
The partial opening comes after months of delays. The original opening date was in January, but that date was pushed back because preparing for the move took longer than expected, Dunkle said.Â
Then, the opening date was set for April. But plans were delayed again in March at the onset of the pandemic, when hospital officials decided to turn the newly built emergency department into a COVID-19 unit to care for the hospital’s growing number of patients with the disease and isolate them from the rest of the hospital.
The emergency department, on the south side of the new building, still houses the COVID-19 unit. If the hospital’s number of hospitalized COVID-19 patients remains low, the plan is to move it to the intensive care unit on the second floor of the original hospital building by Aug. 1, Dunkle said. The new emergency department will open shortly after the patients are moved and that part of the building is disinfected.
The hospital had one possible COVID-19 case Monday, and that patient was in isolation awaiting test results. There were no patients in the unit over the weekend, he said.
"Our numbers are right in line with what’s happening in our area; there’s a great decline in hospitalizations," Dunkle said. "We still have plenty of ventilators, plenty of isolation rooms."
The second-floor ICU has already been moved to the third floor of the hospital’s medical tower, and new isolation rooms on the second floor are being set up for COVID-19 patients, he said.
Patients visiting the outpatient services center should not worry about being exposed to the virus, even though the COVID-19 unit is next door, Dunkle said. COVID-19 patients are isolated and on a different air system than other parts of the building, he said.
"Patients utilizing the outpatient building will not come in contact with COVID-19 patients. They won’t be exposed. Hospitals are safe," Dunkle said. "It’s frightening sometimes, you know, the amount of people that put off care that may have led to a heart attack or led to a stroke."
When it does open, the new emergency department will have more advancements and technology compared to the hospital’s current ER, including bullet-proof glass, isolation rooms and decontamination areas, and a separate entrance for patients brought to the hospital by ambulance.
"The flow will be much better," he said.
The aesthetic of the new building also contrasts the older parts of the hospital. The building is filled with windows to let in lots of natural light, and the emergency department is more inviting than the current one, said Jeff Dutton, Johnson Memorial’s spokesperson.Â
Over in outpatient services, new registration booths are right up front by the main entrance, saving patients the trouble of walking far into the building to get to check in, Dunkle said.
"One of the things we looked at when designing the building was how do we improve patient experience?" Dunkle said. "That was one of the negatives of the current set up, that you had to walk so far to get to registration from your car in the parking lot."
