Tuesday, May. 20, 2008

Rantin: 'Their faces light up'

New children’s hospital

Brightly colored walls, themed floors and quiet rooms for family members are all part of the 150,000 square feet of expanded pediatric compassion at Palmetto Health Richland.

The hospital today celebrates the completion of its newly renovated children’s hospital, which will become the first such free-standing facility in the state when it opens next month on the Palmetto Health campus.

But in addition to the 20 extra inpatient beds, 15 new outpatient beds and an updated intensive care unit, the new children’s hospital is expected to ensure a deeper level of personal care for young patients and their families.

“If you watch, when people walk in here, their faces light up,” Fran Byrd, the hospital’s administrative director, said Monday as she surveyed the lobby of the six-floor, $65 million facility. “When you come in that door, you know this is a place for children.”

While maintaining the pediatric specialties that long have defined the hospital, the new facility is geared toward offering a more nurturing hospital experience, with added space and amenities. Those amenities include age-appropriate play rooms on every floor, more treatment rooms, a chapel, and separate quiet rooms with beds, where immediate family members can rest while staying close to their loved ones.

“We want to be able to provide each family with the kind of family-centered environment that combines compassionate medical care with attention to their comfort needs,” Byrd said.

Each floor of the facility features a theme highlighting a different world habitat, from aquatic, rain forest and grasslands to polar, temperate and desert. Every room includes a mural related to the theme of that particular floor.

While such features won’t cure illnesses, Byrd said, they can perhaps take some of the sting out of hospital stays.

“It all comes together that this is the place for children,” she said.

And while becoming more family-friendly, the new hospital has been designed to be more efficient and provide more comprehensive patient care.

Patients in intensive care will be housed in separate rooms while remaining under 24-hour observation by medical personnel. Additionally, the hospital’s cancer wing and play area are positioned away from the rest of the facility to better shield those patients from outside infections.

And with the added treatment rooms, patients no longer will have to undergo procedures in their rooms, preserving them as places of sanctuary.

“They consider their room like their safe place,” hospital spokeswoman Tammie Epps said.

Palmetto Health Children’s Hospital was the first children’s hospital in the state. Since opening 25 years ago, it has operated on the ninth floor of the main hospital. Today, it has more than 30 pediatric subspecialties and treats more than 82,000 children each year. Once the new children’s hospital opens, the ninth-floor facility will be renovated and converted for other hospital use.

The new facility will occupy the area formerly used by the South Carolina Cancer Center, which relocated to the hospital’s 11th floor last year. The opening comes after a multiyear, $20 million capital campaign. Palmetto Health Richland donated the building and also contributed $10 million toward renovations, and the Palmetto Health Foundation was charged with raising an additional $20 million.

Hospital officials will join others from the community for an open house and preview of the new hospital beginning at 10:30 a.m. today.

“Every time I go through the facility, I get a warm feeling knowing that future children and families will now have the best facility and care when they need us most,” Palmetto Health Children’s Hospital medical director Dr. Caughman Taylor said. “It’s like Christmas in summer.”