TERRE HAUTE — The opening of a new $185 million hospital — the largest single building project in Terre Haute — is slated for Jan. 12, enabling Union Hospital to offer patients a wide array of advanced technology.

Construction as of mid-September was 90 to 95 percent complete, with work still ongoing on two covered pedestrian crosswalks, said Kym A. Pfrank, vice president and chief information officer for Union Hospital Health Group.

Major construction on the hospital will be finished at the end of October, leaving November and December to work on installing radiology and computer systems as well as telephone systems, Pfrank said.

“As always, there is a lot of work to complete in the final stage, with all the loose ends that need to be tied up,” Pfrank said, including minor work such as floor finish. “The building has terrazzo floors, which need to be polished and sanded.”

A covered crosswalk over Eighth Avenue will connect the third floor of Union’s Professional Office Building to the 3A Wing of Union Hospital’s East Wing. A second covered crosswalk over Beech Street will connect the 3E Wing, an oncology unit, to the Hux Cancer Center.

Technology in the new 500,000-square-foot hospital includes an Internet-based telemedicine program at its intensive care units. Specially trained physicians who focus on the care of the critically ill or injured, called intensivists, will monitor, along with nurses, hospital patients 24 hours a day, seven days a week at a medical center in St. Louis.

The eICU system uses a television screen with a camera to allow an intensivist to see and speak with patients and nurses in ICU units in Terre Haute as well as at Union Hospital Clinton.

“The eICU is actually live in our current critical-care unit, and we will move that when critical care relocates to the new building,” Pfrank said.

The new hospital also includes touch-screen TV monitors in nursing stations and inside a patient room for nursing and medical staff. In addition, when a staff person enters a patient room, a radio frequency identification tag on a staff badge will log when the nurse or doctor was in the room and for how long.

A touch-screen monitor in the room allows information to be logged for work such as a skin assessment. New advanced beds weigh patients, plus record details such as if a bedside rail has been lowered, or if a bed position has been moved.

In addition, a camera in the room will allow a nurse to see and speak to a patient.

Each room will have a flat-screen television, through which patients can access the Internet, order room food service and control the room temperature.

The new hospital also will have 14 bariatric rooms, all with overhead rail and lifts, to help assist people weighing 500 pounds or more into showers and bathrooms. In addition, another 40 rooms will have lift assists, replacing the use of mobile lift assists, to help patients get in and out of a hospital bed.

The new facility also will include 14 isolation rooms on each wing, Pfrank said. The rooms have negative air flow, for true isolation of patients with highly contagious diseases such as tuberculosis or even avian influenza, or “bird” flu.

The new hospital has 300-foot-long hallways, with patient rooms on the exterior of the building and nursing and staff rooms on the interior, reducing noise to patient rooms.

An elevated helicopter landing pad, with a heated ramp to the hospital, is now complete. “We are waiting on FAA [Federal Aviation Administration] approvals and inspections” once the facility is close to opening, Pfrank said. The helicopter pad includes its own collection area for drainage and containment of any fuel spills.

Union Hospital officials are considering special open houses, to allow people involved in construction and fundraising as well as the general public a chance to see the new hospital prior to its first day of accepting patients.

“We are considering, and we are still in the discussion stage right now, anywhere from two to four open houses, with one of those open to the public, probably in a four-hour time span either on a Saturday or a Sunday,” said James A. Bertoli, executive director of the Union Hospital Foundation.

Several of the open houses would be done for employees, physicians and family members, as employees and physicians account for 1,000 of the more than 1,200 donors to a capital campaign that has raised nearly $8.2 million, Bertoli said.

Union Hospital Foundation had reached its goal of raising at least $8 million in June with a $250,000 five-year pledge from First Financial Bank. The hospital’s $185 million expansion and renovation project is paid from $176.5 million in bonds, plus the foundation’s “Distinctive Past … Exceptional Future” fundraising campaign.

The Foundation is continuing the fundraiser, hoping to raise $500,000 to complete unfinished shell spaces in Union Hospital East. Union Hospital West, the current hospital, is to undergo renovations starting in the first quarter of 2010.

Another open house is being considered for construction companies and labor unions and their families “to see what they with their blood, sweat and tears actually put together,” Bertoli said. “We want to make sure that everyone involved in making this once-in-a-lifetime project [happen] has the opportunity to come in and look at the finished product.”

Howard Greninger can be reached at (812) 231-4204 or howard.greninger@tribstar.com.



Union Hospital in running for award

Union Hospital is one of 10 finalists nationally for the Hospital of Choice Award for the Year.

This is a followup to its earlier award from the American Alliance of Healthcare Providers as Hospital of Choice.

That was a quarterly recognition for the year and now winners of the quarters have been pared down to 10 finalists.

Dr. Allen Gore, selection committee chairman from the American Alliance of Healthcare Providers, was at Union Hospital recently conducting a survey. The award is based on an application that Union Hospital submitted and its focus is customer-friendly institutions.

“This is clear evidence and validation of our collective efforts and processes to provide our patients the best of care in a caring and welcoming environment,” said CEO David Doerr.



Our Mission

We exist to serve our patients with compassionate health care of the highest quality

Our Vision

Is to be exceptional – as your trusted partner and your best choice for health care.

Our Values

B-eing the best through continuous improvement C-ompassion and caring

E-ducation and innovation H-onesty

S-tewardship O-penness

T-eamwork and partnering I-ntegrity

C-ustomers 1st

E-xceptional quality

About Union Hospital

Union Hospital strives to meet the health care needs of the Wabash Valley through compassionate, efficient and high-quality services.

Union Hospital, Union Hospital Clinton, and the network of primary care physicians join together to provide comprehensive care to residents of west central Indiana and eastern Illinois. The facilities include two hospitals and 14 primary care physicians.

As a not-for-profit health care system, it is committed to providing advanced, quality healthcare to communities. Since beginnings in 1892, the hospital has continued to improve and expand services, facilities and the skills of employees to provide care to all residents of the Wabash Valley, regardless of their ability to pay.

Union Hospital’s unique and vital role

• Union is a teaching hospital providing education and training to family medicine physicians, medical students, nursing students and other allied health professions.

• In 2006, $14.8 million in charity care provided with additional $21.6 million in bad debt for a total of $36.4 million in uncompensated care. In 2005, $9.9 million was provided in charity and $14.8 million in bad debt for a total of $25.7 million in uncompensated care.

Being not-for-profit means

• All excess revenues are reinvested in the community

• Providing state of the art services such as NICU, electrophysiology, diagnostic imaging

• Meeting the needs of our rural residents: Lugar Center for Rural Health, Clay City Center for Family Medicine and Union Hospital Clinton

• Providing care to those in need: Maternal Health Clinic, the St. Ann Clinic, support groups, RTS Bereavement Services and much more.

Taken from Union Hospital’s Web site at: www.uhhg.org

*Source: PRC Consumer Image Study, Feb. 2006

**Source: IHHA Inpatient Discharge Study