IU Morgan to renovate: Hospital plans to invest 'several million' in facility

The exact opposite is true, Puckett said Tuesday. The hospital plans to invest several million dollars in the hospital campus to help transition it from an acute care, inpatient facility to an outpatient health center.

Some of those changes have already been made — such as closing the  birthing center in February 2013— and others are upcoming and will be more visible.

Puckett said the hospital will get a facelift both inside and out. There will not be new construction. The hospital building will take up the same footprint it currently holds.

“We are going to have a significant financial investment that’s going to help us enhance what we do and put our new service operations in place and to do some facility renovations and some IT and technology upgrades,” Puckett said.

The emphasis, however, is on identifying and meeting the needs of the community through this process, Puckett said.

According to information provided by the hospital, it plans to offer a full range of services based on the community’s needs for health and wellness. The services offered include comprehensive primary care and specialty physician care, women’s health, emergency and urgent care services, diagnostic imaging and lab testing, endoscopy, physical, occupational and speech rehabilitation, pain management, cardiac rehabilitation and cancer care.

The first phase of the investment will go toward service enhancements, extensive facility construction, technology upgrades and making facilities more conveniently accessible for patients and families. Building on the recently added cardiology, pulmonology and urology physician services, an IU Health Riley pediatrician and two additional family medicine physicians will be available by mid-2015.

Transportation to facilities that provide care for more complex illnesses or injuries is another identified community service need, Puckett said, adding that local leaders are exploring economical and convenient options to provide transport to acute care services in Indianapolis and Bloomington.

Puckett said this is a loose plan that will take months to come to fruition and they are still formulating some of the details.

“What we are doing today is basically the start of the communication,” Puckett said. “We plan to communicate internally and externally — internally in the next couple of days talking to employees and focusing on their needs and then externally at the (Martinsville Chamber of Commerce) with a (question and answer session).

“Then we will be rolling right into how to operazationalize this, working out the details with building and design and an architect to put some meat on the bones around the plan.

“We will be developing exactly what this is going to look like as we go through these communications.

“Some of these transitions are going to take several months. Healthcare renovation takes a while because of regulatory processes we have to go through.”

The changes are based on research and feedback from many people, Puckett said.

“The process has been very inclusive,” Puckett said. “We have worked with each of the main service departments — both the administrative and physician leadership. There has been engagement from the IU Health system’s leadership and support teams.

“It’s been a robust process in getting people’s thoughts and making sure we don’t miss something.”

As they’ve gone through this process, Puckett said they have kept an eye on patient outcomes and making changes that will best serve them at the lowest cost.

In some cases, this means moving things like laboratory tests to other IU Health facilities. The hospital is, for example closing its histology lab at the end of the year, Puckett confirmed.

“IU Health has an extensive laboratory service and it doesn’t make sense to duplicate some of those services from a patient perspective in all of our facilities when they can be performed in other places at a lower cost,” Puckett said. “As long as it doesn’t have an adverse outcome for a patient, we will do that because overall costs going down is beneficial to the patient.

“We are going through test by test and making sure none of these moves has an unintended consequence for patient care. If you need results immediately, we’re not going to move those services out.”