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The May 22 tornado that devastated Joplin also devastated medical service in the region with the destruction of Mercy St. John’s Regional Medical Center in Joplin.
In response to the immediate need, area hospitals have been adding beds to take up the slack while St. John’s prepares to build a brand new hospital, on land south of Interstate 44 on 50th Street in Joplin.
That hospital won’t be ready until 2014 at the earliest, so in the meantime, Freeman Health Systems has joined Carthage’s McCune-Brooks Regional Hospital by adding beds to spaces that had been constructed to allow for future growth.
Freeman announced recently that it was adding 58 new beds to the fifth and sixth floors of the Gary and Donna Hall Tower, a complex completed a few years ago on the Freeman West campus on 32nd Street in Joplin.
Jeffrey Carrier, chief nursing officer at Freeman Health Systems, said construction was to begin this month on the project, which should be finished next summer and bring the Freeman West Hospital to 345 beds, up from its current 287 beds.
That’s in addition to Freeman’s 94 licensed beds at the Freeman East campus and 67 beds at the Freeman Neosho Hospital.
“When we built the west tower campus, we completed that project in the fall of 2007, we actually shelled out the fifth and sixth floor so they are concrete slabs ready for future expansion,” Carrier said. “Fast forward four years later, we are taking advantage of that wisdom and vision our board had in building out that fifth and sixth floor and we’re going to build these 50 brand new, high-end, acuity-adaptable rooms.
“Acuity adaptable bed or a universal bed is one a patient can occupy from admission to discharge even if the patient’s condition changes. Obviously there is a lot of benefit when you have that kind of system.”
Carrier said the project to complete the rooms will cost Freeman a total of $15 million. He said the fifth floor should be ready to occupy in April 2012 and the sixth floor should be finished in July 2012.
Carrier said the hospital hopes to not only increase bed capacity, but also improve the patient’s experience at the hospital at the same time.
“We’re going to have an improvement in patient progression, or ‘through-put,’ in our hospital as well as,” Carrier said. “This is a big one, a decrease in wait times and delays in care. Right now when you come to several hospitals in this area, you have a lengthy wait time and we hope to decrease that with this expansion. We also hope to improve the patient experience and perception of care because these rooms are really beautiful, nice warm colors, wood floors, comfortable furniture, state-of-the-art beds, high definition, flat screen televisions on the walls, wireless capability for family members if they want to surf the internet, a couch in the room, if they want to sleep in the room, a really nice pullout couch.”
The May 22 tornado that devastated Joplin also devastated medical service in the region with the destruction of Mercy St. John’s Regional Medical Center in Joplin.
In response to the immediate need, area hospitals have been adding beds to take up the slack while St. John’s prepares to build a brand new hospital, on land south of Interstate 44 on 50th Street in Joplin.
That hospital won’t be ready until 2014 at the earliest, so in the meantime, Freeman Health Systems has joined Carthage’s McCune-Brooks Regional Hospital by adding beds to spaces that had been constructed to allow for future growth.
Freeman announced recently that it was adding 58 new beds to the fifth and sixth floors of the Gary and Donna Hall Tower, a complex completed a few years ago on the Freeman West campus on 32nd Street in Joplin.
Jeffrey Carrier, chief nursing officer at Freeman Health Systems, said construction was to begin this month on the project, which should be finished next summer and bring the Freeman West Hospital to 345 beds, up from its current 287 beds.
That’s in addition to Freeman’s 94 licensed beds at the Freeman East campus and 67 beds at the Freeman Neosho Hospital.
“When we built the west tower campus, we completed that project in the fall of 2007, we actually shelled out the fifth and sixth floor so they are concrete slabs ready for future expansion,” Carrier said. “Fast forward four years later, we are taking advantage of that wisdom and vision our board had in building out that fifth and sixth floor and we’re going to build these 50 brand new, high-end, acuity-adaptable rooms.
“Acuity adaptable bed or a universal bed is one a patient can occupy from admission to discharge even if the patient’s condition changes. Obviously there is a lot of benefit when you have that kind of system.”
Carrier said the project to complete the rooms will cost Freeman a total of $15 million. He said the fifth floor should be ready to occupy in April 2012 and the sixth floor should be finished in July 2012.
Carrier said the hospital hopes to not only increase bed capacity, but also improve the patient’s experience at the hospital at the same time.
“We’re going to have an improvement in patient progression, or ‘through-put,’ in our hospital as well as,” Carrier said. “This is a big one, a decrease in wait times and delays in care. Right now when you come to several hospitals in this area, you have a lengthy wait time and we hope to decrease that with this expansion. We also hope to improve the patient experience and perception of care because these rooms are really beautiful, nice warm colors, wood floors, comfortable furniture, state-of-the-art beds, high definition, flat screen televisions on the walls, wireless capability for family members if they want to surf the internet, a couch in the room, if they want to sleep in the room, a really nice pullout couch.”
Kristin Stark, spokeswoman for Freeman, said the expansion means Freeman will hire an additional 80-100 clinical and non-clinical staff to operate the new rooms.
Freeman’s announcement comes on the heels of plans by McCune-Brooks in Carthage to more than double its capacity from 26 to 53 beds. McCune-Brooks is using a talent-sharing agreement with Mercy St. John’s to staff its new rooms with St. John’s employees who didn’t have a place to work after that hospital was destroyed.
One might wonder if, when St. John’s completes its new 327-bed hospital in two or three years, there might be a glut of hospital rooms in the Joplin.
St. John’s CEO Gary Pulsipher acknowledges that a glut is possible, but he doesn’t think it’s likely. Pulsipher said Mercy is building the new St. John’s so it can add or reduce rooms as needed, but he believes the new capacity and capabilities provided by all the hospitals around Joplin will draw more people from the outlying region to seek care.
“Sometimes we think the pie’s only this big and Freeman’s going to get theirs and St. John’s their share,” Pulsipher said. “But actually what I think it does is it makes that pie bigger as we get better. I think that our new hospital will be a very positive thing. I think what Freeman is doing with their capacity is a very positive thing.”
Carrier said Freeman CEO Gary Duncan likes to talk about the increased medical needs of an aging population and how that will mean more beds and services are needed in Joplin.
“The first of the baby boomers turned 65 last year. Statistics show that 82 percent of those that are 65 or older have a minimum of one chronic illness,” Carrier said. “That’s one fact that we’ve fallen back on quite frequently when determining what our needs are going to be in the future. We certainly feel there will be a need for that many beds in the future in our community.”
