Major projects and renovations at O'Bleness Memorial Hospital will improve care for cardiac and emergency-room patients, said Rick Castrop, the hospital's CEO.
Construction is underway for a 16,200-square-foot cardiac and diabetes care center at the west end of the hospital that will allow many low-risk heart procedures to be done in Athens by board-certified cardiac specialists, said Linda Weiss, public relations manager at O'Bleness.
Right now
if someone comes into the emergency department they're going to be taken directly to Columbus if it has to do with heart catheterization she said.
The center is set to open late this summer, Weiss said.
The cardiac and diabetes care center has been named the Cornwell Center for Cardiovascular and Diabetes Care, after longtime Athens residents Foster B. and Helen W. Cornwell, Weiss said.
The couple's $1.2 million memorial gift to the hospital provided a portion of the center's $3 million cost. The rest of the money came from other donations and from tax-exempt revenue bonds, Castrop said.
Because heart disease and diabetes are often linked, bringing them under one roof in the Cornwell Center made sense, Weiss said.
The hospital has also made very
very positive changes in its emergency room care, Castrop said, due in large part to its partnership with an outside agency, Emergency Professional Services, Inc. The agency provided additional doctor and physician-assistant staffing so the ER could operate 24 hours a day, seven days per week, he said.
The hospital is only required to pay the doctors' and physician assistants' salaries - there are no additional fees for EPS, Inc.'s service, Castrop said.
So far, there has been a dramatic reduction in the number of patients who leave the ER without being seen and an increase in the number of patients who arrive and leave the ER in an hour or less, he said.
The time ER patients have to wait before a doctor or nurse sees them has also decreased, he said.
Eventually, the hospital hopes to have bedside registration in the ER that would allow all registration procedures to be done in patient rooms with wireless computers or handheld devices, greatly reducing patient wait times in the ER, Castrop said.
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Emily Vance
