Sacred Heart hosts celebrations
Sacred Heart Medical Center will throw a VIP reception today celebrating the opening of its $100 million West Tower, with new units for surgery, neonatal intensive care and childbirth. The public is invited to a separate event Sunday.
With the newest obstetrics unit in the region, the hospital expects to woo some baby deliveries away from its main competitor, Deaconess Medical Center.
Over the past decade, Sacred Heart’s share of the childbirth business slipped a few percentage points to one-third of hospital births in Spokane County. Deaconess delivered about 300 more babies than Sacred Heart in 2003.
Sacred Heart’s Birth Place will have jetted tubs, day beds where dads or friends can nap, mini-refrigerators and DVD players to meet the competition. Wooden floors and earth-tone walls create a hotel-like mood.
“Oh wow, that sounds great,” said Sara Krentel, 31, who is expecting her third child in April. Her other two children were born at Sacred Heart and she plans to deliver her third in the new unit.
Expectant parents consider amenities and atmosphere when deciding where to deliver their babies. Some tour several hospitals before they choose. Doctor preference, insurance coverage and friends’ experience also play into the decision.
Competition for childbirth cases is important, even though labor and delivery units are not profit centers for hospitals. The units can break even and exert what Sacred Heart President Mike Wilson calls “a collateral impact,” attracting young families who will remain loyal to the hospital.
“What do moms bring?” Wilson said. “Babies. And babies grow into pediatrics patients. And pediatrics patients bring grandparents.”
Deaconess is bracing for the impact. Both big hospitals recently laid off workers due to soaring health costs and more uninsured patients.
“From our perspective, we do anticipate that we will see some impact with the opening of Sacred Heart’s new facility, but how much is unknown,” said Deaconess spokeswoman Janice Marich.
Besides cushy birthing rooms, Sacred Heart’s new tower will house an expansive neonatal intensive care unit to care for rising numbers of premature twins, triplets and quadruplets resulting, in part, from greater use of infertility treatment among older couples. In August alone, Sacred Heart saw deliveries of two sets of triplets and five sets of twins.
The new tower also will house 20 new operating rooms set up with the latest in gee-whiz technology that allows images from a surgery to be burned onto a DVD and filed in a patient’s medical chart.
The first surgeries were done in the new tower on Aug. 30. Moving day for women’s health, obstetrics and the neonatal unit is Sept. 27.
“Everyone knows that a new birthing unit will lure people,” said Sherry Maughan, director of Sacred Heart’s Women’s Health Center. In addition, she said, Spokane County’s birthrate is expected to go up slightly next year.
“We’re hoping to do 20 more births a month to start with, and we think that might be conservative,” Maughan said. If the hospital meets that projection, it will deliver 2,400 babies next year, she said.
The West Tower has been under construction for two years and was in planning stages for years before that.
“We visited seven hospitals and brought back the best of the best,” Maughan said. While expectant moms will appreciate the jetted tubs, nurses and doctors will like the fact that emergency equipment is available in all rooms instead of down the hall. The rooms are bigger by 120 square feet than the hospital’s current delivery rooms.
Hospital managers decided against following one trend tried at other hospitals. At Sacred Heart, women will not spend their post-partum stays in the same room where they deliver, Maughan said.
Other hospitals she visited had tried keeping women in the same room from labor to delivery to post-partum stays.
But those hospitals found out that nurses prefer that laboring patients be clustered together so staff can respond more quickly in emergencies.
The West Tower is Sacred Heart’s largest expansion since 1971. Bouten Construction of Spokane is the contractor for the seven-story West Tower. Mahlum Architects of Seattle designed the project.