Surgery center open house at St. Anthony's

By KATIE LEFEBVRE, Globe staff reporter
May 29, 2008

CARROLL - The operating room is the last place most people would want to be but on June 1 St. Anthony Regional Hospital will open the doors to its new surgery center for a public viewing.

"It is a very unique opportunity that people don't always have - to get to see the inside of the surgery room while they are awake," said Gary Riedmann, St. Anthony president. "It is a unique experience to see the technology. We are looking forward to welcoming our community to the new surgery center before we begin surgical procedures."

An open house and grand opening ceremony will be held from 1 to 3 p.m. with a short program at 1 p.m. The program will feature remarks from former governor, Terry Brandstad; Kirk Norris, president of Iowa Hospital Association; and Art Neu, St. Anthony Board chair.

The 120,000 square-foot, four-story building includes 30,000 square feet dedicated to inpatient and outpatient surgery with the latest computer-aided infrastructure design.

The new construction replaces St. Anthony's 35-year-old surgery facilities. St. Anthony's has grown from two surgeons in 1971, to eight active surgeons.

The last significant investment to the surgery department was the same day surgery unit in 1992. Since 1992, the number of surgeries performed at St. Anthony has grown from 2,073 in 1992 to 4,893 in 2007, an increase of 136 percent.

A patient going to the center would park on the lower level off of Clark St., get on the elevator and go to the third floor for one-stop registration.

"Patients no longer need to come into the other building when they are having surgery," said Linda Petersen, director of surgical services at St. Anthony's. "They will be admitted here and they will never leave this area unless they need to be admitted to the hospital."

She commented that since 80 to 85 percent of the patients are there for same-day surgery, they will not have to go into the hospital.

The waiting area offers a panoramic view of Carroll from the floor-to-ceiling windows, computer kiosks and a flat-screen television. Family members can also keep track of their patient's progress through the pre-operative process, surgery and recovery on electronic patient tracking monitors.

"Hopefully it makes the stressful time, while waiting for someone in surgery, a lot nicer," said Petersen. "When a family is here with their loved one, we will be giving them a code and they will be able to track where their loved one is. They are getting a constant update without having to feel like they have to bother someone."

From the registration area, a patient would go to one of the 20 private rooms to prepare for surgery. The rooms are set up in pods of four and each pod has access to a bathroom. There is a sink in every room for hygiene purposes.

"We have added patient monitors in each room so we no longer have to handle vital signs by hand. We hook them up to the equipment and it will automatically do it for us," said the director of surgical services. "That adds to our efficiency."

The patient would then be taken to the operating room. All of the equipment is mounted on booms to keep all cords and suction off of the floor, improve safety and add flexibility for equipment placement.

Following surgery, the patient would be taken to recovery where there is an isolation room and an additional eight recovery stations. Once again each station has a patient monitor to keep track of vital signs, medical gases and the nurse call system.

"We have an isolation room so that if we have a patient who may need to be isolated, we can do that," said Petersen. "This is one area where you can't do private rooms, but we do have privacy curtains."

Eventually there will be two corridors leading from the hospital into the surgery center - one will be a service corridor and the other will be a public corridor.

"I am excited to see the public corridor because they have obtained local art work from some of the area artists and will be displaying them in that corridor," said Petersen.

Plans for the surgery center began taking shape after a hospital planning committee visited six hospitals that had experienced recent surgery construction or renovation.

"We identified what kind of flow we liked," she said. "It was a team doing it. We know what works for us."

Riedmann noted that the team was a combination of maintenance, nurses, physicians and others. Their goal was to figure out what was going to work at St. Anthony's.

Parking at open house

For the open house, parking will be available on the first parking level of the surgery center, in all St. Anthony campus parking, the parking lots at Holy Spirit School and at the Greteman Center. A shuttle bus will run a route through parking areas to pick people up and take them to the surgery center.

Those attending are invited to assemble in the second level of the parking area of the surgery center to enjoy the program, apple pie and ice cream and take a walking tour of the third floor surgery area.

This will be the only opportunity for the public to tour the operating rooms and sterile area of the surgical department. Following the open house, the interior areas of the surgery center will be closed to the public to be cleaned and sterilized in preparation for surgery to begin.