Local hospitals expand services

Local hospitals expand services

Written by Darcie Duttweiler Friday, 13 June 2008

 Once Seton Southwest Hospital completes its new professional building, the medical facility on FM 1826 will have something in common with the Dallas Mavericks and the San Antonio Spurs, something no one else in town has.

The project, set to begin construction this month, will add more than 35,000 sq. ft. of office space and several new additions to the hospital, as well as allow expansion of current services in the main building.

“The professional building is a wonderful complement to the hospital,” said Mary Faria, vice president and COO of the hospital. “As we’ve reached our capacity, it allows us to expand key services and add additional services.”

New additions

The improvements include two Hydroworx 1200 aquatic therapy pools with underwater treadmills. The Spurs’ and Mavericks’ facilities are the only locations in Texas to use the same 1200 series, which is the most advanced in the industry.

The hospital will also move its physical therapy and sports medicine center from its current location to the new building, along with expanding the Pilates studio into a pulmonary rehabilitation center in an effort to integrate sports rehab and physical therapy.

With physicians’ offices moving to the new building, more space will be available in the old offices to allow for an expansion in the sleep lab. The two rooms, which Faria likens to “staying in a hotel on vacation,” will increase to four.

MRI services will also be added to the new building, which will give Seton Southwest the technology to diagnose problems, such as torn cartilage in a knee, that other machines cannot detect.

“Imaging technology is one of the most important diagnostic tools we have today,” Faria said. “With imaging, many problems can be detected in a less invasive way.”

Improving the hospital

Despite only having nine emergency room beds compared to the 20 beds at Seton Medical Center Austin, Seton Southwest does about two-thirds of the traffic of the main campus’ ER. After the ground breaking of the professional building, the hospital will increase the size of its emergency room in October with five additional rooms that will be ready in eight to 10 months.

Seton Southwest is also steadily acquiring new technology. Last year, the center upgraded its CT (computed tomography) scanner from a single-slice to a 64-slice. The new machine can scan an entire head in one minute versus the five minutes that the single-slice required.

“With the volumes we have in our emergency room, we desperately needed it,” Faria said.

St. David’s South Austin Hospital

Meanwhile, closer to IH 35, the larger St. David’s South Austin Hospital is also trying to stay abreast of new technology and services. After completing renovations and updates with funding provided in 2004, the hospital is ready to grow again. It treats almost 170 patients with emergency services every day.

It could be next in line for a large expansion after the construction of a 377,000 sq. ft. women’s facility scheduled to open in April 2009 at St. David’s North Austin Medical Center.

“Our capacities are getting to the point where we need more space as we’ve grown with the community,” said Erol Akdamar, CEO of the South Austin Hospital. “Residents shouldn’t be surprised if we expanded in the near future.”

Akdamar said that possible expansions could include an electrophysiology lab with plans for a digital mammography suite in the fall.

Recent Expansions

In 2004, the hospital added more than 100,000 sq. ft. to the original building, which established a comprehensive cardiovascular center, the first of its kind within a general hospital in the region. It added two new cardiovascular operating rooms and doubled the number of cardiovascular recovery units.

“Twenty-five years ago, most patients came to South Austin Community Hospital with fairly routine needs—a broken arm or to have a baby, for example,” Akdamar said. “While we still offer those same services, today we also have a number of specialties including providing the latest in protocols and technologies for patients with cardiovascular diseases.”

The hospital expanded its emergency room by adding 18 new treatment stations, bringing the total to 39, and adding 34 surgical beds. The Intensive Care Unit increased with an addition of six new beds. In March, South Austin Hospital also purchased the 64-slice CT scanner.

For the people

South Austin Hospital owes its presence to the concerned residents of South Austin and, according to Akdamar, it continues to grow because of an increasing population demand.

Although the Central Texas Health Systems Agency recommended not building a hospital in South Austin, local residents persisted.

In 1980, two neighbors, Bill and Vergie Badger, gathered 3,400 signatures, while others wrote letters of support to the Austin American-Statesman, South Austin Herald and Austin Citizen. Residents’ supported with car bumper stickers proclaiming, “We’re Sick of Not Having a Hospital in South Austin.”

When the Texas Health Facilities Commission overruled the agency, South Austin residents put up a sign proclaiming, “Site of South Austin Community Hospital…We Got It South Austin.”

On September 19, 1982, South Austin Community Hospital opened as a 99-bed facility and accepted its first patient. It celebrated its 25-year anniversary last September.

Awards and Recognitions

Both St. David’s South Austin Hospital and Seton Southwest have been locally and nationally recognized.

St. David’s

In 2005, Solucient named South Austin Hospital to the 100 Top Hospitals list for Cardiovascular Excellence for the second consecutive year. In 2007, HealthGrades recognized it for the second consecutive year with an Award of Excellence in General Surgery and a “5 Star” rating for Excellence in Women’s Health Services.

This May, St. David’s HealthCare received the Texas Award for Performance Excellence, the highest honor bestowed by the State of Texas based upon world-class quality measures. St. David’s is the first healthcare system in Central Texas to receive this award. The Texas Award for Performance Excellence is an annual recognition of Texas organizations that have achieved performance excellence and have applied outstanding quality principles in their day-to-day operations.

Last year, Seton was the recipient of the 11th annual Ernest Amory Codman Award. The award recognizes excellence in the use of outcomes measurement by healthcare organizations to achieve improvements in the quality and safety
of healthcare.

Seton was recognized for an initiative to reduce preventable birth injuries. The program resulted in a 93 percent reduction in birth trauma rates from 0.3 percent for 2001-2003 to 0.02 percent in 2006.

Recently, the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems released the results of their 2007 survey in which hospitals were given scores based on patient satisfaction. Seton Southwest Hospital received 81 percent of scores nine or 10 (the highest scores possible), well above the United States
average of 63 percent, and second in the Austin metropolitan area to the Heart Hospital of Austin’s 83 percent.