By Alan Lytle
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/wuky/local-wuky-969628.mp3
Lexington, KY – Unless you volunteer or work at a hospital it's probably not the place you would choose to start or end your day. But a walking tour of UK Chandler Hospital's new Patient Pavilion may change your mind about that. Alan Lytle shares highlights from his trip through the facility.
Executive Vice President for Affairs Michael Karpf, has overseen every aspect of the building's construction estimated cost, 532-million dollars. He says from day one the idea has been to offer critical and acute care patients and their families a kind of shelter from the storms of life.
"It's the sense that they can kind of decompress as they come up and see their loved ones"
Kentucky-themed design touches have been incorporated to make people feel more comfortable with their surroundings.
"There's a lot of Kentucky landscaping, lot of Kentucky images, lot of Kentucky art so we want people to be proud of Kentucky and proud of this facility."
There's also a massive Gingko sculpture in the atrium, an interdenominational chapel for meditation & reflection, plus a gift shop, and a 305-seat auditorium and concert hall which on this day, featured a local children's choir.
The Second floor includes a caf and outdoor terrace, plus a "Celebrate Kentucky" wall of video monitors which display various and shifting scenes of everyday life in the Commonwealth.
Upper floors are designated for patient care. 128 intensive care and acute care beds will begin serving patients starting this Sunday.
Registered Nurse Brooke Judd explains the finer points of patient and physician monitoring.
"If you can see there are computers everywhere. This is where we want physicians, respiratory, physical therapy, dietary, we want all these people to come in here and work together to come up with a plan for the patient."
Trauma ICU Nurse Mandy Zachem says state of the art doesn't even begin to describe each patient room.
"Each of the rooms has a boom system. The booms are movable throughout the room to allow for maximum space usage. The TV's will eventually be connected to the food system and allow for order of dining services, they will do patient education for their dismissal and that type of thing."
Patient Pavilion A is but one phase of a 10 year plan to completely replace the now half a century old, Albert B. Chandler Hospital. Health Affairs Executive VP Michael Karpf says the overall goal is to have a hospital that will keep pace with the changes in medicine for the next 100 years.
"It was state of the art then, but it was built for how healthcare was being delivered without much anticipation of change. This hospital is being built so that it is state of the art now, but also has tremendous flexibilities because we know healthcare is going to change, we just don't know how it's going to change."