PORT ANGELES — Olympic Medical Center officials see two busy years for new construction and remodeling work ahead at the hospital.
“We are in a continuous mode of facility remodeling,” Olympic Medical Center Administrator Mike Glenn said.
A $1.6 million obstetrics remodeling project is scheduled to start in July and be completed by next February.
The construction contract for the project is expected to be awarded by the medical center’s board at its meeting Wednesday at 6 p.m., Glenn said.
About 450 babies are born annually in Olympic Medical Center’s obstetrics unit. That is down from 650 annual births a year ago, said Eric Lewis, the hospital’s chief financial officer.
The decline, Glenn said, is attributed to Forks Community Hospital opening its own West End obstetrics unit and a general decline in Clallam County’s birth rate.
“This is a service that is declining in volume and requires subsidization,” said Glenn, but must be fully staffed year-round.
The obstetrics unit has about 25 employees.
Group effort
The unit’s remodeling design was jointly approved by doctors, nurses and patients, said the hospital chief executive officer.
Jim Paapke, hospital director of facility management, said the unit’s air conditioning system will be upgraded, and each room will be private with its own bathroom.
The obstetrics unit now has two rooms sharing a bathroom.
The postpartum and labor sections of obstetrics, which was last remodeled 10 years ago, will get new looks, Paapke said.
The remodeling will give each room a more of “a feeling of hospitality to make it more like home,” he added.
Rooms will be more warmly decorated as well with raised-panel wood doors.
Adding to infant safety, he said, the baby nursery will be relocated adjacent to the nurse station.
Added security
Obstetrics will become “a lockdown unit” accessible by encoded cards only.
This will add to infant security system and deter infant abductions, said Paapke.
Each infant will be given a wrist band that will immediately trigger door locks in close proximity and sound alarms in the event of an abduction.
Babies will also spend less time in the nursery and most of the time with their mothers, said Paapke.
Cafeteria/dietary
A larger-scale project, to follow the obstetrics unit improvements, is the remodeling of the hospital’s cafeteria and dietary department.
The busy department includes a kitchen that prepares about 1,020 meals a day, hospital officials said.
“We’ve often considered how our cafeteria would compare to the busiest restaurant in town,” Glenn said.