CHANUTE — A delegation of Allen Countians who will help decide if Allen County Hospital should remodel or build anew, visited Neosho Memorial Regional Medical Center Monday afternoon.
They found a hospital opened in 1951, a year before ACH, that has undergone substantial updating through the years. The most recent is a $20 million stem-to-stern renovation.
Dennis Franks, Neosho Memorial administrator, said that the old hospital has been in constant need of maintenance and that a quarter of the money currently being spent was for “miles and miles of infrastructure under the hospital, things that you can’t see.”
Franks led members of the ACH advisory committee on a two-hour walk-through of the hospital, which from its renovations over the years gives a feel of being in a labyrinth. Upgrades and expansion have created a maze of hallways and areas where specific medical services are provided.
“That’s why we have all the signs, to help people find their way around the hospital,” Franks said. “And, if you get lost, just stop someone and ask,” assuring that all of the facility’s 400 full-time and part-time employees knew their way around.
Franks said the latest round of remodeling came after six to eight months of planning and commended the ACH committee members for looking at what other hospitals, including his, had had to do to keep pace with modern health care delivery.
“I’m sure you’re facing many of the same challenges we did in Neosho County,” he said.
NMRMC is laid out in a 250,000-square-foot structure and is a critical access hospital, meaning, as it does for Allen County, that inpatient services are limited to 25 beds at any one time. The campus has three structures independent of the hospital: A former private residence provides overnight lodging for visiting physicians and others; a former nursing home was converted to home health and hospice services; a new building houses therapy and rehabilitation services, including a gymnasium and fitness center.
An advantage of the $20 million makeover, the first since 1984, being done in three phases is that revenue bonds dating from October 2006 have generated interest to increase the size of the issue and pay for more improvements.
The work entails new patient care areas, including emergency department, inpatient, intensive care and outpatient observation units and nutrition services area. Also, the laboratory and imaging department were renovated and expanded. A magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) device is leased by the hospital and is available anytime needed.
Franks said a women’s health division on the hospital’s second floor was popular with patients from throughout the area and that 325 to 350 babies were delivered at the hospital each year.
“We upgraded our sleep laboratory and it is constantly busy,” for procedures to determine whether patients suffer from sleep apnea, he said. Two suites, resembling motel rooms, are available.
The pharmacy fills about 30,000 prescriptions a year.
“Our surveys find that 95 percent of our emergency room patients are satisfied with the treatment they receive — a wait of no more than 15 minutes is our standard — and inpatient satisfaction runs about 98 percent,” Franks said.
In part, he said, the high level satisfaction is attributable to a good case management system, which includes a “bed huddle” every morning to go over conditions and needs of all patients in the hospital.
THE HOSPITAL, a not-for-profit facility, is governed by a board of trustees appointed by Neosho County commissioners. No tax levy is required for its operation. Quorum Health Resources, based out of Brentwood, Tenn., has provided management services the past 25 years for the Chanute hospital.
The hospital concentrates on Neosho County, but considers all of southeast Kansas in its service area, Franks said.
And, he noted, “We would like to work with Allen County in whatever way we can. We would be happy to talk to you when you decide what you want to do.”
Allen County commissioners have said they would like to decide in early summer the path of the hospital.
