Halifax Medical Center

Patient privacy┬áKeith Regan learns how Halifax Medical CenterÔÇÖs building project modernizes healthcare delivery to the fast-growing Florida population without losing touch with the past. Halifax Medical Center of Daytona Beach is the Florida coastal cityÔÇÖs primary hospital, featuring the areaÔÇÖs only Level II trauma center and the only pediatrics emergency department.  Currently licensed as a 764-bed hospital, the facility (part of the Halifax Health system, which operates 20 hospitals and medical facilities in the northeast part of the state) is poised for a major expansion that will dramatically change the way inpatient care is delivered. The 550,000-square-foot addition known as the North Tower will enable the hospital to add some 175 beds. Perhaps just as important is the fact that all those new beds will be located in private patient suites that also feature room for family members. Dan Lang, administrator of the facility, says the addition serves three main goals: enabling expanded services and dramatically increasing privacy while also adding capacity, a key consideration given FloridaÔÇÖs population growth trends. While most existing patient rooms are semi-private, medical care trends and patient expectations dictate more private accommodations. ÔÇ£I think in 20 years weÔÇÖll look back and wonder how we ever delivered care in semi-private settings,ÔÇØ Lang says. Newer patient privacy regulations mandate a more private setting as well. ÔÇ£ItÔÇÖs almost impossible to maintain the level of confidentiality and privacy thatÔÇÖs expected and required today in a semi-private setting.ÔÇØ Private rooms can also help prevent the spread of infections among patients. Enabling patients to have families nearby is another key part of the move to private rooms. Each suite will have a family zone to enable loved ones to stay nearby, which is important to help provide care for patients but also for psychological reasons. ÔÇ£People who are in those situations are scared, and being able to be near people they love can help with that, and that can help healing,ÔÇØ Lang says. Three floors in the new tower will be shelled-in space set aside for future expansion. One floor will be set aside for critical care units and others will be set up to become hybrid critical care and medical/surgical space. The new addition will also feature an updated 89,000-square-foot emergency room that will be designed for maximum flexibility. The facility will be made up of eight pods, each of which will contain 12 beds and can be opened or closed based on the volume of patients in the facility. Teams of doctors and nurses can be assigned to pods, and pods can be set aside as special care units during times of major trauma events. The emergency room will also have its own dedicated CT scanning capabilities, a decision the hospital made after noticing that much of the demand for CT scans was being driven by the emergency departments.Preparing the way for the project involved acquiring the property beneath it, which had been occupied by single-family homes, apartment buildings and a church. The hospital negotiated individual purchase agreements with some 70 property owners. Construction began in July 2007 and is slated to be wrapped up by July 2009. A number of design considerations went into the final tower, some aesthetic and some structural. Florida state building codes have been toughened significantly in recent years after devastating hurricanes. They are now especially strict for hospitals, and as a result, the North Tower had to build with wind-tunnel-tested products that have been proven capable of withstanding winds of up to 180 miles per hour. ÔÇ£ItÔÇÖll be the safest building in town,ÔÇØ says Lang. It will also be one of the most visually striking. The tower, which will be topped with a helicopter landing pad, will carry design elements from the original 1928 hospital building, with the Spanish-Mediterranean flavor carried into the tower, including stylized belvederes at the top. The tower will also be one of the tallest structures in that part of Daytona Beach. ÔÇ£It will be very impressive visually,ÔÇØ predicts Lang. With construction well under way, the project remains on time and under budget, Lang says. He credits a very strict policy against approving change orders with keeping the project on track financially. ÔÇ£The change orders are what kill a budget, so weÔÇÖve been very tough on those,ÔÇØ he says. He also credits architects Perkins & Will and general contractors and construction managers Robins & Morton with ÔÇ£doing exactly what they promised from the start.ÔÇØ The work site is a hive of activity. ÔÇ£They are a very motivated and focused bunch. Some days there will be 400 to 500 people working on the site, and nobody is sitting around. ItÔÇÖs an impressive site.ÔÇØ A companion project to the new building work is already completed and in operation. A $23 million investment has yielded a new consolidated central energy plant that combines chillers, boilers and generators into a single computer-monitored system that is trained to run at maximum efficiency given the needs of the hospital at any given time. ÔÇ£We anticipate it will save us a lot of money over the long run thanks to that project,ÔÇØ says Lang. ThatÔÇÖs important not only because of the current spike in energy prices, but also because the hospital expects to see demand for its services continue to rise in coming years. While the recent building boom in the Sunshine State has abated, the long-term trends have been for the state to grow. ÔÇ£One thing that has historically been true is that the future in Florida is always growth,ÔÇØ adds Lang, who has been with the Halifax system since 1982 and has been administrator at the Daytona Beach facility since 1997. ÔÇ£We always have to be considering and planning for how we can handle that growth.ÔÇØ┬á