The Board of Regents approved a plan Oct. 16 that will allow the C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital to further extend its ability to meet surging demands for pediatric inpatient and outpatient surgeries, as well as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) services.
The 8,000 gross-square-foot renovation project will create a new operating room and a new exam area with MRI technology, and expand the existing Post Anesthesia Care Unit (PACU), where surgical patients initially recover. The $10.7 million project will be completed for patient use in two major phases. The PACU and MRI area will be completed in early 2005, followed by completion of the new operating room in fall 2005. Detroit-based architectural firm HarleyEllis is set to design the project.
As one of the nation’s leading children’s hospitals, Mott continuously has made every effort, including expanding operating room hours, to maintain high quality services while keeping up with growing patient care needs. However, that task has proved challenging: demands for Mott surgical services have increased an average of 5-10 percent each year, while pediatric MRI services are increasing at a rate of 15 percent annually.
With this new project, Mott again will meet the challenge of extending the use of its existing facility, built in 1969, to provide quality specialized services for sick and injured children from Michigan, across the country and around the globe, says Patricia Warner, associate hospital director and administrator, Mott Hospital.
“Our existing facility has been maximized to its fullest potential to keep up with increasing pediatric patient demand and to maintain our commitment to quality patient care,” Warner says. “These exciting changes are important as they will enable us to meet rapidly increasing demand, and will help bridge us over to our new children’s hospital, a future project and high priority for the Health System.”
Designated by the state as a comprehensive children’s hospital, Mott is the only local area children’s hospital qualified to have a pediatric MRI unit. MRI is a technique for creating pictures of body structures and organs using magnets instead of radiation for imaging.
Warner anticipates the new addition will increase patient and family satisfaction, as well as hospital staff efficiency for the service. Currently, Mott patients need to be transported via an indoor bridge to the adult University Hospital for MRI services.
With the addition of one operating room, Mott also will be able to accommodate more patients for surgical services. In fiscal year 2003 alone, more than 9,000 operations were done at Mott, 60 percent of which were outpatient procedures.
With only eight operating rooms and two post-operation treatment areas currently, Mott surgeons and operating room staff have needed to expand weekday operation hours, and schedule surgeries on the weekends to meet an increased need for surgical procedures, says Dr. Arnold Coran, surgeon-in-chief at Mott and head of the section of pediatric surgery.
“We undoubtedly need a greater capacity to bridge the gap for our increased surgical load,” says Coran, a professor in the Department of Surgery. “The addition will keep us more competitive with our peer hospitals too, since many of them have two to three times as many ORs as Mott.”
The new operating room will provide Mott surgical faculty and staff with enough space to accommodate all pediatric surgical services. The room will be designed specifically for minimally invasive operations, including laproscopic surgical procedures.
PACU, currently a two-phase, 16-bay unit, provides intensive nursing care and acute observation for patients in all phases of care following surgery. To meet growing needs, the project will increase the Phase II area, the final stage before a patient is discharged or moved to another area of the hospital, from eight to 18 bays. The additional bays will allow PACU to merge with the pre-operation area, which currently is separate from the surgical suite.
With cooperative input from Mott staff, the project is expected to cause minimal interruptions to patient care. The U-M Hospitals and Health Centers’ capital resources are providing funding for the project.
