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PRMC move to North Campus now in progress
By Sally Boswell
Published November 14, 2009
Paris Regional Medical Center announced late this past week that the hospital is Northward Bound — at last.
Essent Healthcare and PRMC officials said Thursday that the hospital has officially begun the process of transferring all of its acute care services to the North Campus — the site of the former McCuistion Regional Medical Center — located just off of N.E. Loop 286 at 865 DeShong Drive.
Once the process is complete, the North Campus will be home to all acute care services as well as an emergency department, the Heart Hospital, women’s services, labor and delivery, pediatrics and ancillary functions.
Essent officials have long said plans were to concentrate services at the North Campus.
“PRMC is committed to providing the highest quality health care possible for our community,” said Chris Dux, CEO of Paris Regional Medical Center. “To fulfill this commitment, we must change to meet the needs of our patients so that we can continue providing advanced care for years to come. This move enables us to concentrate services in one location and increase the efficiency of providing health care services to the region.”
“Today’s announcement is another demonstration of our strong commitment to being the medical leader in our region,” Dux said.
According to Dux, the plan calls for the move to take place over the next 10 to 13 months, and is to occur in phases so that all infrastructure and care support services are in place to ensure that the main move is as seamless as possible. Each phase will be orchestrated to prevent disruptions in patient care and key services.
“This much-anticipated announcement follows a thorough and deliberate evaluation process by leadership at both PRMC and Essent Healthcare, PRMC’s parent company,” read a press release accompanying the announcement. “Through that process, hospital officials kept the following key benefits first in mind:
•Easier access for patients and their families to services they need every day;
•Strengthened quality of care as a result of a focused approach to each acute care service on a single campus;
•Better coordinated services to meet the health care needs of northeastern Texas and southeastern Oklahoma both now and into the future; and
•A seamless transition process that ensures uninterrupted patient care.”
The transition to the North Campus has been a long time coming. Even before the purchase by Essent of what was then Christus St. Joseph’s Hospital, plans were being made to bring together all acute care services offered by the hospital to a single location — the hospital’s North Campus.
Hal Andrews, then senior vice president of development for Essent, said in 2003 that the future of Paris’ hospital was in the old McCuistion facility, because the site has more room for expansion and the land is not divided by city streets. Even Christus officials, before the sale to Essent, said their long-term plan was to consolidate all operation to the North Campus.
“The first part of the move to the North Campus was the establishment of The Heart Hospital,” Dux said. “It took us almost 12 months to get that done. Based on that experience and with assistance from the Camden Group — one of the nation’s leading health care business advisory firms — we hope to streamline things as much as possible without overlooking any of the pieces of the puzzle during this move.”
“It’s more than just moving things,” added Michael W. Browder, president and CEO of Essent Healthcare, who was in Paris for the announcement Thursday. “We have to focus on the people and the processes. We want to make sure we have the right resources to make sure we are thinking things through in advance of the move.”
“We’re going to be in a different physical space,” Browder continued. “It’s configured differently and we’ll have to make some decisions on whether to do some internal construction and how to orient things. Little things have impact, like whether a door opens to the left or to the right.”
As acute services are moved to the North Campus facilities, a number of sub-acute departments now located in the former McCuistion buildings will be relocated to the South Campus.
“Some of those moves have already been accomplished, such as the recent relocation of the skilled nursing facility to the South Campus,” Dux noted. “Others, such as rehabilitation and the L-TAC, the long-term acute care services, will follow.”
“This building is a lot of space for even these services,” Dux continued. “As the process continues, the board will determine how the space can be best utilized. It may be that some of the hospital’s support services, such as accounting or human resources, could be located here on the South Campus.”
“A lot of hospital systems in the country have had to spend valuable resources to move support services out of the hospital so they can reclaim that space for patient care areas,” Browder said. “We are blessed. We aren’t going to have to build a building. We are going to have excess space and we will be looking at many options for the space on the South Campus.”
“The South Campus will continue to be a working, vital part of the hospital system,” Dux continued. “But after the consolidation is complete, it will take the guesswork out of which location is which. For the public, it won’t matter if they are having a baby, or a heart attack or a headache. If they need immediate medical care, they are going to end up in the same place.”
Late last week, Dux and Browder met with members of the hospital board and the medical staff, as well as department managers and hospital employees to formally announce the beginning of the final phase of the transition. As the move continues, hospital officials also plan to conduct a series of user group meetings with staff and employees to gather input and assess the needs of each of the functional areas of the hospital. Steering committees will coordinate with the user groups to help prioritize issues that need to be addressed.
The public will also be kept apprised of the status of the move, Browder said.
“We have started a Web site and we are going to continually update the site as we reach milestones in the process,” he said. “It is already up and running and we plan to populate the site with areas for comments, photos and frequently asked questions. In six to eight weeks we will know more about the prospective timeline of the move, and we will keep the public informed of the process and how the work involved could impact the public.”
The Web site is www.prmcnorthwardbound.com.
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