On October 27, the community had a chance to view mockup rooms of our inpatient, ambulatory and medical clinic rooms for the new medical campus. The full-size prototype rooms were built at the old Melissa's Hope Chest in the South Ridge Plaza, giving personal and the community a chance to see how the designs would work in real life with real beds, furniture and medical equipment in the rooms.  

"I think this step improves the quality and safety of care for our patients," said hospital CEO Kayleen Lee. "We're at a point in health care that we need to make sure we're doing it right the first time. There is no room for duplication of efforts. We're really working hard to make sure we have it the way we need right away."

Some of the goals are to reduce patient fall and potential errors.

"We're also are looking to increase our productivity," Lee said. "One of the biggest factors for patient satisfaction as well as staff satisfaction is making sure that supplies that are needed are at the hands of our providers."

Several changes have been made to the original design because of the mockup rooms.

"One of the first things that we identified when we built the bathroom according to the first plans was that it was not going to be big enough," Lee said. "By doing several adjustments here in the mockup rooms, we could expand that. On paper, the original plan looked good and met the standards, but it wasn't the size we wanted."