Critical Care on the rise

The first patients will be moved into VCU’s Critical Care Hospital Tuesday. The building features 15 floors of intensive care units including extensions of the neonatal and surgical trauma ICUs and the Evans-Haynes Burn Unit.

The $192 million building surpassed the proposed budget of $184 million. The Critical Care Hospital, located at 1213 E. Clay St., has been under construction since 2005. With 367,000 square feet, it contains 232 private beds, making almost one in five hospital beds critical care.
“The major areas that this helps us with are infection control as well as the support for patients and their families,” Medical Director of Critical Care Dr. Curt Sessler said in a promotional TV segment.

The eighth floor of the hospital is the Evan-Haynes Burn Unit, the oldest civilian burn unit in the U.S. It will be the only unit in the critical care hospital with both inpatient beds and an outpatient clinic. The rooms are approximately 250 square feet, allowing for more than one medical team to treat the patient at a time. The medical wall – usually behind the patient’s bed – hangs from the ceiling in the burn unit, so physicians and nurses can access patients from 360 degrees.

Chief Facility Officer Bob Reardon said the goal in creating the hospital was patient safety. Architects built space for dialysis machines in every room to avoid moving patients around, which can cause further infection and injury.

“I think this (burn unit) is the best in the United States,” Reardon said.

The Neonatal ICU features 32 single rooms and four twin rooms. Each room has amenities such as a medicine wall behind the cribs with cord management slots, special lighting for newborns and sound-absorbing walls and ceilings.

The monitors in the NICU rooms also contain a chip for children’s heart wavelengths, instead of the standard adult wavelengths.

Dr. Sheldon Retchin, chief executive officer of VCU Health System said VCU has future plans to renovate, replace and construct its infrastructure and the School of Medicine will be undergoing construction soon at the present location of the A.D. Williams building.

“The Critical Care Hospital is indeed a vital step, but not the last step,” Retchin said. “The modernization and redevelopment of VCU Medical Center will continue.”