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New Maternity, Neonatal intensive care units at SEBHC
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Neighbors | Tim Cleveland.St. Elizabeth Boardman Health Center's new deliver rooms are spacious and have the newest technology.
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Neighbors | Tim Cleveland.St. Elizabeth Boardman Health Center lactation nurse Linda Lake stood in one of the facility's new rooms that was build as part of a $100 million project.
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Neighbors | Tim Cleveland.A new baby incubation room was part of St. Elizabeth Boardman Health Center's $100 million building project.
By TIM CLEVELAND
Area mothers who are expecting will have a new facility in which to have their babies as St. Elizabeth Boardman Health Center and Akron Children’s Hospital have completed a massive construction project at its facility located at 8401 Market Street.
On April 5, SEBHC hosted an open house for area residents to tour the new maternity and neonatal intensive care units, which officially opened April 7.
SEBHC President Genie Aubel said the open house was the culmination of a lot of hard work.
“We are so excited about this,” she said. “This was a $100 million construction project that we’ve been working on for years. We’ve put up another seven-story tower on our campus only 6 1/2 years after opening the first tower. We’ve been embraced so well from this community and had the privilege of serving hundreds of thousands of people here, and in part due to that great response, we’ve had the opportunity to be granted this $100 million to be build on to our facility.
“In this construction project we’ve added 14 labor and delivery beds, 33 postpartum beds, a 25-bed NICU [neonatal intensive care unit] that’s being operated by our partner Akron Children’s Hospital. We’ve also added four additional operating rooms, an endoscopy room, an eight-bay infusion center. It had heated chairs for our patients and lit ceiling panels that look like blue sky and clouds; trying to make an environment that’s welcoming and not light and sterile.”
The birthing suites each had a large screen TV, a recliner, a rocker for the moms, a shower and rest room plus baby warmers.
Aubel said even more additions will be completed in the coming months.
“We’ve also expanded all of our support areas to be able to hold all this,” she said. “In our future fazes, this September we’ll be opening an LTAC on our seventh floor. That’s a long-term acute care facility and that will be operated by select specialty hospital. In January, we’ll be opening another med. search floor, and then shortly down the road, another full telemetry floor. We have a lot more growth still coming in the seven-story tower.”
One of the attendees of the open house was Christina Satterfield of New Springfield. She said she was very impressed with what she saw.
“My doctor told me there’s an open house and I’m due in about three weeks, so I wanted to come and check it out,” she said. “It’s gorgeous, It’s big.”
Aubel said all the rooms are private, plus there is a special drop-off area to make admitting mothers in labor to the hospital much more streamlined.
“We’re pleased to bring this to our community, to have all private rooms in their mom-baby experience,” she said. “All the rest of our rooms on this campus are private. As individuals build hospitals all across the country, you don’t build semi-private rooms. This will be an enhancement for our patients that they can come here and deliver and have all private rooms for their experience.
“We also have a special designated drop-off for laboring mothers. On the south end of our new wing, there is a drop-off area just for laboring mothers. The fathers can pull in, come to the door, push a button. We have security cameras from our nurse’s station that look down and see indeed it is a woman needing our services. The doors are unlocked by automatic button and they can come right up to our labor and delivery floor for service. Unlike in the past, where they’ve had to come in through the ER or other areas of the hospital and have to traverse through the entire hospital, we park right outside and bring them up.”