The six-floor east tower will have 60 beds, including 14 for the intensive care unit and 16 for a new intermediate care unit, or IMU. Staff said the expansion was necessary to accommodate growing demand at the hospital.
“Almost every day I come in the hospital we are at capacity,” said ICU Director Dr. Sandip Desai. About 90 percent of his work, which includes cardiopulmonary procedures, will now be on the East Tower’s second and third floors.
The east tower will open with 60 beds, including 14 for the ICU and 16 for the IMU.[/caption]This expansion helps the hospital admit more patients and get them in and out of emergency services faster, said Greg Haralson, CEO of Memorial Hermann Sugar Land.
“This does improve the patients’ experience,” Haralson said.
The first floor will house conference rooms, a pre-admission area for patients, support services and a cafe. Endoscopy, cardiopulmonary, respiratory units and a pharmacy will be located on the second floor.
The third floor will contain the ICU and IMU, while patient rooms will be on the fourth floor. The fifth floor is unfinished shell space while the sixth floor is for mechanical equipment, according to Glenn Willey, the hospital’s manager of corporate communications.
Haralson said the tower is designed for a potential four additional floors, each with 30 beds. He said having the IMU—a new service for the hospital—will improve the turnaround time for transferring patients out of the ICU.
“[We have] better opportunities to take care of patients that are sort of in-between, and it’s more cost-effective than having to keep them in an ICU,” Haralson said.
About 100 new staff members were hired for the expanded capacity, but Haralson said the hospital expects it will need more employees as new beds come online. Meanwhile, about 30,000 square feet of renovations were made in the hospital’s existing west tower.
Some departments in the west tower will be moved into newly available space.
Labor and delivery patients on the third floor will now go to the fifth floor for post-partum care. Pediatric intermediate care will be there as well, which clinical manager in women’s services Julie Fonseca said excited her to have those services in the same place.
Labor and delivery services see an average of 100 to 120 births per month, but August was the highest on record with 161 births, Fonseca said. The neonatal intensive care unit will also be expanded.
“It’s really hard when you have a lot of ladies coming in in labor,” she said. “There’s no where to put them.”
Construction of the East Tower broke ground in May 2014, and Haralson said it ended about one month ahead of schedule. The transition will be done in phases so that employees are prepared and patients are not inconvenienced, staff members said.
“This tower is like, kind of a new home for all of us,” Chief of Hospitalist Services Dr. Daryl Dichoso said. “So we’re all excited about it.”
