BROOKINGS – Brookings Health System will officially move into its new east addition on Feb. 7, but providers have a hospital to run in the meantime and that will include relocating some services while they remodel some parts of the facility.

Next Tuesday is the official moving day, but the moving has already begun, according to Julia Yoder, director of marketing and public relations; Gavin Weber, rehab services director; and Steve Timmerman, pharmacy director.

“We’ve got a couple days that we could use some volunteers, Feb. 8-9, in the afternoon. We’re looking for a group of people, possibly 10 to 15,” Weber said, probably older teens and adults.

Those wanting to help should contact him at gweber@brookingshealth.org or call 696-8060.

“In addition to the volunteers, our staff are putting in a lot of time and a lot of extra hours to make this move possible and make it happen,” Yoder said, adding some departments will be moving over the weekend.

Transition

“(Tuesday) is the first day we’ll actually be providing services over at the new hospital,” Yoder said. “The plan for inpatient care and obstetrics is that physicians will round in the morning. After that is done and patients are taken care of, then the nursing staff will be transferring them from the old hospital over to the new hospital.”

“Another thing important for people to remember is the last day that we will be registering people at the front of the hospital here (22nd Avenue entrance) is Feb. 6. So Feb. 7, when people are coming to the hospital, even if they’re coming to visit somebody, they should be using our southeast entrance (off Yorkshire Drive),” Yoder said.

“What’s gonna happen then is this is gonna get a chain link fence around it, this entrance (on 22nd Avenue), and it’s gonna get closed off for remodeling,” she said.

Timmerman pointed out the yellow insulation visible from the 22nd Avenue entrance.

“That (will be) part of the new front entrance that comes across. They can’t work on that until we vacate these areas up here,” he said.

Out with the old

But that comes after the move into the new addition.

“Most of the stuff that has been moved in is new equipment. The equipment we’re currently using – hospital beds, chairs – we’ll be moving closer to the 7th,” Weber said.

The equipment and medicines they are still using will go over at the same time as the patients, Timmerman said.

Some of the current equipment has been deemed redundant by newly purchased equipment and will be donated to Helping Kids Round First, an organization run by Craig Severtson and based in Flandreau, said Weber. The equipment and supplies will be donated to hospitals in Nicaragua.

Some things being donated are the old X-ray machine, and a sterile product isolator, which prepares sterile IV products and chemotherapy, Timmerman said. Miscellaneous items like curtains and bedsheets will also go, Weber said.

In with the new

One new item Yoder is excited about is the MRI machine.

“It’s indoors. Our old MRI has been out of doors,” she said.

BHS used to have a truck bring an MRI machine once a month. Then as more MRIs were needed, the truck came twice a month, then weekly.

“So, instead of having a truck come all the time, we just had to get our own (in 2006),” she said.

There was one problem, it wouldn’t fit anywhere in the hospital.

“MRI has a lot of space and special requirements for how it’s installed and shielded,” Timmerman said.

The answer: put the MRI in its own separate building, but there was a catch – that building wasn’t connected to the hospital.

“So when we got it, everybody thought it was great because now they didn’t have to wait for the truck or go to Sioux Falls; they could get their MRI scheduled whenever. But the drawback was, they had to go outside, which in the winter isn’t necessarily the most fun thing to do,” Yoder said.

The new set-up will be an improvement.

“It will be much nicer for both patients and staff. And probably will help our quality score some, the fact they don’t have to go outside for their MRI,” Yoder said.

“It’s getting older; the technology has changed so much,” Weber added.

The new one will be much more quiet than the old one, Timmerman said. It’s also more open for patients who have a bit of claustrophobia and it can accommodate larger patients, he added.

The old MRI will be traded in and the value will go toward the cost of the new MRI, Yoder said.

The surgical department got more space with three operating rooms and two procedure suites, and new equipment, including booms that attach to the ceiling to give doctors better access to equipment, and new cameras for scopes.

The procedure rooms have new equipment to do colonoscopies and similar things, Yoder said.

A brand new X-ray machine will move in alongside one purchased a little over a year ago.

One piece of equipment the hospital already has that will be moving over is the da Vinci robot used in surgeries.

“The robot is something that we invested in a couple of years ago (in 2013). It’s another way of doing minimally invasive surgeries. The advantage of the robot is there are these wrists on it that have 360 degrees, so the surgeons can ... control all of their equipment and tools that they need to do surgery,” Yoder said.

Better for all

The price for the east addition construction is $35 million, and the total for all the construction and renovations at Brookings Health System is $46 million, they said.

That’s a lot of money, but it will be worth it, officials say.

“Increased efficiency of care,” Timmerman said was the top priority. “More room and better technology to provide the care and increased patient satisfaction – that’s one of the big pushes.

“We have the rooms that are now private rooms, where everything can happen in the room with less moving around of the patients; better accommodate the families, as well,” he added.

“One huge key is ... the patient privacy,” Yoder said. “Our current facility, when it was built in 1964, there were double-loaded rooms, meaning that two patients were planned to stay there. The model of care then was 80 percent of patients stayed overnight in the hospital, so they were inpatients. Whereas today, you have 70 percent of patients coming to the hospital for same-day procedures.

“This construction focuses on those two needs: the need for patient privacy and being more friendly to HIPAA laws and making it easier for staff to abide by HIPAA,” Yoder said, referring to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996.

“The other thing is convenience,” she said, from closer parking to having patients’ room on the same floor as the surgery rooms, instead of taking them on the elevator to different floors.

Not done

The move doesn’t end the upheaval for BHS.

“Now we go into the remodeling phase,” Yoder said, listing the operating room, radiology and pharmacy in the old section.

Their goal remains the same: deliver care to their patients.

“We are asking the public to be patient with us during this Third Phase, because there’s gonna be a few services that are going to be moved and relocated during this,” she said. Among those will be cardiac rehab and outreach.

She said there will be signs to help people find their way, and information will be given to patients when they schedule appointments.

“We’re asking our staff to take people to areas. We just have to ask the public to please be patient with us. And apologize for our mess in advance,” Yoder said.

Contact Jodelle Greiner at jgreiner@brookingsregister.com.