Hospital prepares for ICU expansion

The project is in the final design stage and is expected to be completed by fall 2015, he said.

Expansion

Prior to beginning the process of expanding the unit, Brown had begun hiring nursing staff and physicians with the ability to care for more critically ill patients, said Dr. Dominic deKeratry, medical director of the St. Davids Georgetown Hospital ICU and chairman of the department of medicine for the hospital.

That, along with a increase in support services, led to the need for an expanded unit with updated technology, he said.

Everything is up, and complemented by the physicians in the community, we can really take care of anybody, deKeratry said. The only thing really left to change was to build out the infrastructure of the hospital to accommodate what [Brown] had done with staff and what we had done with doctors bringing [patients] in.

The ICU, which currently has six beds, will be expanded to nine critical care beds, including two isolation rooms that will allow doctors to separate and treat patients with contagious diseases.

The space will also include new state-of-the-art monitoring technology equipment as well as space for five additional treatment beds as needed and a dedicated ICU waiting room.

It wouldnt surprise me if we have another busy winter, that we are just going to build out those five beds, too, Brown said. The funding is not there [to go ahead and build the additional beds], but in a very short period of time it will be a 14-bed ICU. And that is a larger-than-normal complement of ICU beds compared to other beds in a hospital our size.

Changing medical needs

DeKeratry said increasing the size of the ICU will also allow the hospital to keep pace with the changing health care landscape in the United States.

[The hospital is] evolving into a model thats ideal for what the projected forecasts are for health care in the United States, he said.

Brown added that with the increasing number of patients receiving care in outpatient facilities, hospitals will be used more for the critically ill.

While we are feeling [increasing] pressure in every aspect of our operation, we see the future of all hospitalsand particularly oursis going to be to focus our attention on the most critically ill patients in the intensive care unit, Brown said. Thats why we are more than doubling the size of our ICU and going to really try to meet that community need.

As Georgetowns population continues to grow and age, the number of patients who need critical care services is likely to increase, deKeratry said.

Georgetown is a wonderful community, it has a very good medical community and it has a lot of need, he said. Its growing like crazy, and the needs of the community are getting higher and higher.

Being able to treat patients in the city in which they live is also important, not only to the patient but to the patients family as well, said Kenny Schnell, Williamson County emergency medical services director.

The increase in the [ICU] services and level of services is very important to us, and I think its very important to the patient and to their loved ones and family members, too, Schnell said. Its great to have more options and a higher level of care and acuity that we can take our patients to.

Schnell said in the past year the number of patients transported to St. Davids Georgetown Hospital had increased about 4 percent.

To be able to have the patient there and for their family to be close by is so important, and having that high level of care is a win-win situation, he said. The caliber and trust continues to increase with St. Davids Georgetown.

The additional space and equipment will allow the hospital to care for an increasing number of patients, and will also allow the hospital to be able to perform procedures and care for a variety of illnesses that would have previously required transferring a patient to a larger facility, Brown said.

Some of the things we dont do here yet will come, deKeratry said. Its going to be very a robust diversification of high skills to provide to the community.

The hospital is already performing some critical surgeries, including thoracic procedures that treat diseases of the chest, he said. However, with the increased capacity physicians will be able to provide more complex procedures for heart and cancer patients as well as other patients.

When Dr. deKeratry and I first met in 2009, we very quickly had a common vision for the hospital that we wanted to create in Georgetown Hospital a place that was so capable and had such a great reputation that patients who lived in the Georgetown community would have no reason to leave Georgetown, Brown said. Weve tried to create a world-class organization, and I would say in a lot of ways weve achieved that.