Vol. 4, No. 10, October 2007
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QUALITY CARE
AtlantiCare’s newly expanded Atlantic City campus takes patient care to new levels
A sign on the Atlantic City Expressway boasts that some of the nicest new rooms in town are not in the hotels, but in the city’s hospital.
This may be true, but the private rooms, complete with fine art and family visiting areas, are only a small part of the story in the $128 million expansion of AtlantiCare Regional Medical Center’s Atlantic City campus. ARMC’s new city campus, which will officially be christened with a VIP party Oct. 11 and will accept its first patients Oct. 15, is a carefully planned and masterfully executed example of the absolute state of the medical art.
In all, the expansion entails a new seven-story patient tower, a new emergency department with its own diagnostic imaging suite, a new radiology department, a new intensive care unit with 26 private rooms, four new surgical floors including 30 private in-patient rooms each, and a new helipad (opened in June) with a trauma stabilization facility and direct elevator to the E.R.
The project also entails renovation of 23,000 square feet of the existing 109-year-old hospital, and construction of a pedstian bridge over Michigan Avenue connecting to the Coliseum Parking Garage at Caesars Atlantic City.
Following the opening of the hospital’s Harrah’s Regional Trauma Center this month, the seven floors of the tower, called the George F. Lynn Harmony Pavilion, will open in phases until all new rooms are available by the end of the year. The complete expansion and renovation will be open by sometime in the spring.
However, the facts and schedule of the expansion don’t begin to tell the story of the careful planning and community involvement that led to the creation of a medical facility that will no doubt be hailed as one of the top such facilities in the region, if not the nation.
The hospital’s executive staff, led by Vice President and Administrator Margaret Belfield, reached out to experts in the community for help in planning a facility that would best promote healing and wellness in all aspects, from the colors and design elements used in the rooms to the most effective floor plans for the trauma center. They even sought help in selecting art that would most promote healing to adorn the rooms and public spaces. (See page 29.)
The community responded in a big way, forming committees along with hospital staff and donating their time and advice in planning sessions over the past few years. The ARMC staff also sought advice within the industry, and did a wealth of research on what would be needed to allow the trauma center and pavilion to serve the community’s needs.
“We really did a lot of homework, with the community as well as within the industry,” says Belfield, “to make sure we were really addressing the current needs of patients and families. We planned the facility around evidence-based design principles for patient care and the healing arts. We incorporated a lot of the research out there now as to how you promote healing and wellness.”
The community support culminated with a $1 million donation from the Harrah’s Foundation in July that prompted ARMC to change the name of its new trauma center in recognition of the support from the city’s largest casino operator.
The Harrah’s donation was a surprise, “and an honor,” says Belfield. “One of the things that tell you you’re a value to the community as a health organization is when your community embraces you,” she says, adding that because ARMC is a not-for-profit organization that refuses care to no one, donations from the community are vital.
Harrah’s Center
The newly named Harrah’s Regional Trauma Center is easily among the most advanced facilities of its kind anywhere in the country. It is designed with a remarkable eye toward functionality, incorporating the results of painstaking research into the best ways to serve patients in an emergency care situation.
The Trauma Center is the heart of the new facility. It is at the center of ARMC’s plan, because it was the element most sorely needed. “I have a great staff here; we’ve gotten external accolades for things we’ve done well clinically, from both quality and safety perspectives, which we’re very proud of,” Belfield says. “But we needed a new building. We really needed to get the right facility for our patients and their families, as well as the staff.”
The first order of business in planning the new Emergency Department was simple: it had to be bigger. According to Belfield, ARMC currently handles around 50,000 visits a year in a facility that was built to handle around 20,000. “That had been a source of complaint, because it’s so cramped,” she says. “The new facility is much larger.”
0Throughout the new facility are examples of the careful planning that went into it. There are decentralized nurse stations, so no patient is far from a nurse, and to make the atmosphere more quiet, and calming for patients. There are sliding glass doors separating treatment areas, so all patients have a degree of privacy. Outside the treatment area are separate waiting areas for pediatrics, trauma patients, psychiatric patients and all others.
There are windows in the treatment rooms, high enough so people can’t see in but large enough to let in natural light, which has a calming effect on patients simply because it is a dose of normalcy rarely seen in an emergency room environment.
The design is functional for the staff as well. “We’ll have four rescuscitation bays, as opposed to only two in the current facility,” says Larisa Goganzer, ARMC’s director of special projects. “Within the Emergency Department, there is a CAT-scan and radiology room. So, if you need testing done in the Emergency Department, you stay in the Emergency Department. You don’t have to go to another floor or area.”
Built for Comfort
The same kind of attention to detail went into the design of the rooms in the Harmony Pavilion. In fact, its 146 large rooms (30 per floor on four surgical floors, plus 26 in the intensive care unit) will be all private—as will be renovated rooms in the existing 600-bed facility—is novel enough in the health care industry.
However, again, painstaking research within the community led to a facility built for patient comfort, down to the smallest detail.
The rooms may not have all the comforts of home, but it’s as close as you’re going to find in a hospital environment. “Patient control is really important,” says Belfield. “They can control their own heating and air conditioning, their TV and lighting. The staff can’t come in and turn all the bright lights on.”
There also is “family space” on each floor. “We’re inviting the family in, because having your family around you really promotes healing and comfort, because hospitals can be scary environments,” Belfield says. “We’ve built in very comfortable family space on all the floors.”
In addition to physical comfort, attention was paid to cultural sensibilities when designing the pavilion. According to Belfield, the interior design effort was helped by another community committee—the same committee that helped select the art for the facility.
“For example, we had originally placed white curtains in all of our rooms,” she says. “We were told by the advisory group not to have white curtains—that it meant death in certain cultures.” They also had feng shui experts evaluate room design, to create space in which all would feel comfortable—space that promotes healing.
That even includes spiritural healing. One space in the pavilion that will be complete in the spring is a new chapel. “Spirituality is part of health and harmony, so we invited a group of representatives from various religions in our community to come together and look at the stained glass, and to look at how the chapel was set up,” Belfield says. “They said they were honored just to be invited—that no one had ever asked for their participation in such a project. They made some changes to the coloring of our stained glass—they thought it was too solemn—and they turned the light in the room a bit to respect the Muslim community. We’ve gotten a better chapel as a result.”
In the end, all of the combined effort will result in what is sure to be recognized as one of the premier health care facilities in the Northeast. “What I’m most proud of is the community and staff involvement,” says Belfield. “You can walk through the building and see their hands in it. When I asked the community to participate, I wasn’t sure people would do it. They did, and they brought friends with them. What it’s all done is open us up a little more to a relationship with the community.”
And, it has given Atlantic City a first-rate hospital.
