Page 30 - 2012-may-jun

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30
Healthcare Journal of BATON ROUGE  
MAY / JUN 2012
woman ’ s hos p i tal
The construction of
Woman’s Hospital’s
main entrance nears
completion.
construction in January, 2009. A year later, a more streamlined
version of the project came back on line with the same contractors,
but a smaller price tag. It is estimated that the construction phase
of the campus created approximately 1500 jobs and injected about
$330 million into the local economy. The area is already experi-
encing a flurry of new construction in anticipation of the hospi-
tal’s opening and the facility itself has been designed to allow for
future expansion both vertically and horizontally. A second delay
occured in April, 2012 when Woman’s announced the opening
would be pushed back to allow adequate time for training. Con-
struction delays had shortened the available time frame.
The old Woman’s Hospital campus on Goodwood and Airline,
which will be vacated by early summer, has been on the market
with Beau Box since May, 2011. The 24-acre site, which served
Baton Rouge women and children for 43 years, has had no tak-
ers thus far.
Woman’s Hospital nurses and
physicians played an integral role in
the design and layout of the new
hospital rooms
, from the location of
equipment to the placement of outlets.
televisions and storage areas are all part of a conscious effort to
make patients as relaxed as possible. The hospital ’s eight operat-
ing rooms are located in the center of the new facility on the 2nd
floor and patients can recover in the 5th floor med-surg/oncol-
ogy unit. Like the old campus, the facility will also feature a phy-
sician’s tower housing most of the same physicians and services.
As the designated Louisiana Emergency Disaster Preparedness
Hospital for pregnant women and babies, the hospital will be
backed up by three emergency generators funded by FEMA. In an
effort to avoid environmental impacts of its own, the new facility
incorporates many eco-friendly features and design elements.
The decision to move to a new site was made back in 2005, but
like many pregnancies, the journey to the new site was not with-
out some bumps in the road. A struggling economy, high interest
rates, and a poor bond market forced Woman’s to put a hold on