Page 21 - Healthcare News Jan/Feb 2022

CELEBRATING 125 Years!
Jennifer Adams
Director of Marketing
413-584-0310 | www.dasullivan.com 82-84 North St., Northampton, MA
ENDURING QUALITY
ENDURING TRUST
For 125 years!
JGS Lifecare, Sosin Rehabilitation Center, Longmeadow, MA • Photography by Andrew Rugge
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2022 WWW.HEALTHCARENEWS.COM 21
MEDICAL CONSTRUCTION & REAL ESTATE CONT’D Room for Improvement
CDH’s ER Expansion, Renovation Is Just What the Doctor Ordered
CBy ELIZABETH SEARS
ooley Dickinson has a vintage 1973 Emergency
Department — functioning well beyond its
expected lifespan.
Even though this older facility has been a workhorse
through the pandemic, helping support its community through what is now four waves of COVID-19, it has some obvious bottlenecks. Due to a constriction of space, those at Cooley Dickinson have found themselves getting creative, using hall beds in order to get by. However, an intriguing, $15.5 million solution is currently in the works for 2023.
The plan, “Transforming Emergency Care: Campaign for the Cooley Dickinson Emergency Department,”
will include the renovation of 17,000 square feet, plus a
“We looked at the entire institution, and the Emergency Department emerged as the number- one priority.”
6,600-square-foot expansion. In 2019, Cooley Dickinson completed a master plan for facilities, and the Emergency Department was identified as an area greatly in need of expansion and and renovation.
“We looked at the entire institution, and the Emergency Department emerged as the number-one priority,” said Diane Dukette, chief Development officer at Cooley Dick- inson. “Then came the pandemic, and that only further heightened that need we had to take over the endoscopy space to create a specialized respiratory Emergency De- partment.”
This project was delayed due to the COVID-19 pan- demic; the initial plan was to start in 2020. However, this
has allowed for plenty of time to plan, and those at Cooley Dickinson are feeling optimistic about the current timeline.
“The more planning you put into this, the better your construction phase is going to be, so we plan to really work with Consigli, our construction manager, to roll out a good phased-construction plan so it goes smoothly,” said Dr. Robert Redwood, an emergency-medicine specialist at the hospital.
Since this project is occurring in an endemic-COVID world, the plan is incorporating HVAC needs like filters and negative airflow throughout the Emergency Depart- ment. This will be essential for taking care of patients dur- ing an ongoing respiratory pandemic, Redwood said.
The ED expansion and renovation project continues to be the top priority of the organiza-
“There’s going to be good lighting for the staff, staff respite areas and we’ll really try to take care of the people providing the care as well,” he said. “We are sort of in the midst of a burnout epidemic as well during the COVID epidemic, and we want our facilities to be a place where staff feel proud to work and are able to take care of patients but also take care of themselves.”
Space Exploration
It has been firmly established that crowding in emergen- cy departments leads to poor outcomes, which is especially evident from the ED crowding that has been seen across the nation due to COVID-19. This has only emphasized the importance of streamlined processes where medical profes- sionals can move their patient population through their space and get the emergencies diagnosed and stabilized in a rapid fashion, Redwood said.
“There are time-sensitive drugs,” he explained. “If you come to the emergency department with a stroke, my
goal is to get you tPA — it’s called alteplase — within 60 minutes, and a key step there is getting this CT scan in a timely fashion, so the closer the CT is, when it’s co-located in the department, the quicker you can do those critical- care pathways.”
Another focus of this renovation project is creating a more geriatric-friendly facility. This includes features like large hallways, accessible bathrooms, nutrition stations, mobility aids, good acoustics, good signage, and bright lighting.
“These sound like no-brainers now, but they’re really not no-brainers,” Redwood explained. “You have to build it, you have to design it, elegantly. When patients come into the ED with dementia, they can easily have sensory overload, and then have behavioral changes due to sensory overload, so you want to have an environment that sup- ports care for patients with dementia.”
Cooley Dickinson’s Emergency Department has received geriatric emergency department accreditation by the American College of Emergency Physicians, making it a
DIANE DUKETTE
tion. The Emergency Department is roughly 40% undersized right now for the population it serves, and that figure does not take into account the Pioneer Valley’s constantly growing population.
Due to the current space limita- tions in the existing ED, Cooley Dickinson’s staff strategically makes decisions every day about where to put patients. This is not ideal for anyone, but the staff is doing every-
thing they can to ensure patient care, Dukette said.
“Our staff are spending more time doing workarounds
and showing up and providing exceptional care in this space,” she told HCN, adding that more space will allow them to do their jobs more efficiently.
Redwood spoke of the ‘triple aim’ in healthcare, which focuses on better outcomes, population health, and patient satisfaction. Now, there’s been considerable interest in a ‘quadruple aim.’ The Institute for Health Improvement has developed a four-part framework which includes care for the care team — something that has been key during this pandemic, he said. This factor will certainly be reflected in the upcoming project.