When Memorial Hospital opened its new inpatient pavilion late in 2020, the second floor of the facility was built with the ability to add more rooms in the future.
As it turns out, the future is now.
Memorial Health’s Board of Trustees approved a measure Thursday night to allow 12 additional rooms to be added to the three-story tower, to bring the facility total to 48.
The new 77,000-square-foot tower currently has 36 patient rooms available, 24 on the third floor and 12 on the second. During the $50-million construction process space for 12 additional rooms was left unfinished, with the appropriate infrastructure work in place.
Executive Vice President Spence Fisher said the facility already has a need for the extra rooms. He said patient volume at the hospital is above expectations and that increase has nothing to do with COVID.
Fisher couldn’t pin down the exact cause for the increase, but felt some of it could have come from procedures that were delayed during the pandemic. It was noted during the meeting that most central Ohio hospitals are currently experiencing high patient volumes.
Fisher also noted that the new facilities at Memorial could be leading some additional patients to visit the hospital.
Fisher said the facility hasn’t experienced 100% capacity, but has on several occasions required the hospital to enact protocols to deal with very high patient volumes.
Fisher said the hospital did not have a previous timeline in place to complete the 12 additional rooms.
The cost for finishing the extra rooms will likely be about $4 million. The board of trustees approved a measure Thursday night to approve a “do not exceed” limit of $5.5 million for the project.
Memorial CEO Chip Hubbs said the goal is to have the rooms ready for patients by the fall of 2022, ahead of the cold and flu season.
In other business, the board:
•Viewed a new community education video promoting the role of Memorial Health in the community. Filming of the video was planned for last year, but the pandemic delayed its completion. Vice President of Community Engagement Melanie Ziegler explained that portions of the video were shot with employees masked and unmasked so the video could be edited in the future to have a more current look.
•Learned that the hospital is in the process of updating several corridors of the facility that connect newer portions to older sections. The improvements in the hallways will help tie the entire facility together.
•Learned that COVID numbers at Memorial Hospital are up slightly, but remain very low overall. The facility has not seen a COVID patient in more than a week.
•Discussed changes coming to the way information is distributed to employees. The health system will be moving away from town hall-style meetings and will be producing shorter, topic specific, videos that employees can view at their own leisure.