This Central Georgia hospital is making a $10 million addition to its intensive care unit
This Central Georgia hospital is making a $10 million addition to its intensive care unit
For a rural hospital that serves over a dozen counties, CEO Don Avery said their intensive care unit is almost always at full capacity
DUBLIN, Ga. — ‘Please pardon the progress!’
That’s what folks at Fairview Park Hospital want patients to know as they began construction to expand their intensive care unit last week.
They recently got over $10 million from the Hospital Corporation of America to grow their unit.
Tami Thomsen is the intensive care unit director and said it’s almost always busy there.
“And we are almost always at capacity. Any given day, there could be patients waiting downstairs for an ICU bed,” Thomsen said.
She said they’re expanding their units by 50% to give the best care to people in some of the worst physical conditions.
“So we serve a lot of populations of patients. A lot of kidney disease patients, cardiac patients, stroke patients,” Thomsen said.
For all of those patients, there’s only 16 beds currently. When they fill up, some patients have to be referred to other hospitals. That’s why CEO Don Avery said they’re adding eight more beds, brining their capacity up to 24.
“Well we found out really, probably before COVID but during COVID, we just never had open beds on our intensive care unit,” he said.
While the construction continues, he said it might look and sound different throughout the hospital.
“There may be a little noise, especially for the next several weeks as we do some demolition up there, but all our current ICU is fully functional,” Avery said.
They also plan to start renovating rooms on the third floor of the facility, to add to patient experience and comfort.
“All the rooms will have the walk-in, you know showers. New toilets, new sinks and counters,” Avery said.
Fairview Park Hospital is a rural hospital that serves over a dozen other counties. For many people, it’s the closest intensive care unit. The expansion aims to let people heal closer to home.
“To have to travel and go you know, another hour or two out of the way, that is a definite burden, you know stressfully and you know, cost,” Thomsen said.
The hospital hopes to have the expansion construction completed in about eight months, and the renovations completed a few months after that. They expect to wrap up all construction in one year.
Their current units are still operating as usual, and Avery said the construction will end every evening by 6:00 p.m.