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New MUSC hospital to mix high-tech care with ‘homey’ feel
By Dennis Quick
Senior Staff Writer
Consider operating rooms with flat screens displaying patient information to surgeons. Imagine hospital rooms with televisions patients can program to contact and communicate with hospital staff.
These are but some of the features of the Medical University of South Carolina’s new 156-bed, $275.8 million facility the hospital is adding to its medical campus to help it serve the Lowcountry’s changing population and to make the region’s health care industry more competitive with other health care markets around the country, says Dr. John Heffner, MUSC medical director.
The new hospital will be among the first in the nation to have operating rooms equip-ped with flat screens enabling surgeons, anesthesiologists and other medical staff to view lab test results, diagnostic images and other patient data, MUSC says. All rooms will be “flexible” to accommodate new technology. Additionally, the hospital’s interior will be a warm, relaxing departure from the cold, antiseptic look usually associated with hospitals.
Construction on the hospital began in April, and completion is scheduled for January 2008.
The hospital’s first phase will consist of a 641,000-square-foot building for cardiovascular and digestive disease care. Cardiovascular disease, including heart disease and stroke, is the No. 1 killer in South Carolina, accounting for 41% of the state’s deaths in 2001, according to the American Heart Association. MUSC doctors say such specialization in one location will improve the hospital’s efficiency.
“If you are referred here with a heart problem, you will find everything necessary to get you seen, promptly diagnosed and appropriately treated in the best possible way, all in a relatively small space,” says Dr. Fred Crawford, surgery department chairman. “You won’t have to go to six or eight different locations. This has been a dream of mine for years to build a new hospital related to a single disease entity and see how efficient we can make it, and see how much better we can make it for our patients.”
Heffner describes the hospital’s operating rooms as “futuristic.” During surgery, medical staff need only push a button and patient information, such as echocardiogram readings and lab test results, are electronically and instantly retrieved and displayed on a flat-screen monitor.
This technology also allows doctors in an operating room to help patients in other parts of the hospital. For instance, if a nurse in an intensive care unit discovers that a patient is in trouble and needs to notify the patient’s surgeon, the nurse can use a camera in the ICU room to send the patient’s image to the surgeon.
Doctors and other medical staff will be trained on simulators before using the technology.
The hospital’s paperless technology will allow patients’ medical records to be stored electronically and accessed by all authorized staff. Rather than writing prescriptions on paper, doctors will key the prescriptions into the electronic system, thus eliminating errors caused by illegible handwriting.
When the doctor enters the prescription into the system, the system alerts the doctor if there is any possibility the patient will have an adverse reaction to the medicine.
The hospital’s interior design also will play an important role in patient care, Heffner points out.
“Patients react emotionally to a setting,” Heffner notes. “We want the hospital’s environment to put them at ease. The interior will have Charleston cream-colored tones, and the patient rooms will be more spacious, include a small sofa and have a homey feel.”
Family waiting rooms will be close to patient care areas and contain kitchenettes. To help safeguard patient privacy, the hospital’s layout will limit the transportation of patients on gurneys and in wheelchairs through public areas.
The planning behind MUSC’s new hospital is partly driven by baby boomers retiring to the Lowcountry and expecting health care quality to be as high as to what they are accustomed to, Hefner explains. The new hospital has been designed to meet those expectations and treat chronic Lowcountry illnesses such as heart disease by blending high technology with a “high touch,” more personal approach to patient care in a more calming environment.
“We like to think of the new hospital as one of the jewels in Charleston’s crown,” Heffner says.
MUSC is considering building more outpatient clinics throughout the Charleston area to treat people who do not require hospital care. If the outpatient clinic cannot treat the patient, then the patient will be sent to the hospital, Heffner says.
Dennis Quick covers health and wellness for the Business Journal. E-mail him at dquick@crbj.com.
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