Surgical hospital outgrows Oil Center location
Surgical hospital outgrows Oil Center location.
Park Place Surgical Hospital officials say the impending move to Our Lady of Lourdes campus on Ambassador Caffery Parkway at Verot School Road was prompted by their need to expand.
The new surgical center will more than triple the existing space, growing from approximately 38,500 square feet to 120,000 square feet. "The current demand is outpacing our ability to provide services at the current location without some substantial expansion of our support services," says Park Place CEO Brandon Moore. "We needed more space in our support areas to give our caregivers more room to provide greater patient efficiency, better throughput for the system and better patient satisfaction."
Park Place began as a 15,000-square-foot ambulatory surgical center at 910 Wilson St. in 1999. Originally the facility was designed for about 20 physicians to handle a few thousand ASC cases. "The purpose was to have a surgical hospital that offered quality surgical care to our patients in Lafayette, in an attempt to make things more efficient than in an acute care hospital center," says Dr. Paul Breaux, an original Park Place member now serving as chairman of the board. "We started out as an ambulatory surgery center, which was doing only very small cases of patients that would go home the same day."
Photos by Robin May
Site of the new Park Place Surgical Hospital, part of a $28.5 million project, on Lourdes' campus
In 2003, the center morphed into a licensed acute care surgical hospital, adding overnight rooms and doubling in size. Three years later, Park Place entered into a joint venture with Lourdes, which bought a minority interest in the surgical hospital. "There were a large number of us in Park Place that felt we could only be benefitted by joining with a full acute care hospital," Breaux explains. "There were lots of benefits that could come with that, not only in purchasing and supplies, but also in quality of care of issues and things like that which the full-service hospitals were so good at."
Over the last three years, cases at Park Place increased nearly 30 percent. In 2012, the number of physicians performing procedures grew to 55. "Our caseload has grown dramatically over the years," Moore adds. "That's in large part due to our employees, our physicians and the support we receive from the community and the patients."
Brandon Moore, Bud Barrow and Dr. Paul Breaux
It's taken a while for discussions about the relocating to come to fruition. "It's been in the planning process for four or five years, when we realized we were having capacity issues in our some of support areas and things we needed to expand," Moore says. "We knew that we needed to grow, and needed a replacement facility. We looked at lots of options, and determined that moving to Lourdes was the best option for us, and the alignment of the two facilities into the future would benefit both organizations."
"Park Place was arguably the most successful ambulatory surgery center in Louisiana, and I think became the most successful short-stay surgical hospital," says Lourdes CEO Bud Barrow. "So, it was an ideal fit for Lourdes in many ways. The medical staff of Park Place were the physicians who had been large and important contributors to Lourdes' success over many decades. And, early on, I think it was clear to all of the leadership that if Park Place was to continue the chain of success that it had for a number of years, it would have to look to the future, which would invariably include a new location, greater capacity and a new, more contemporary design."
The Lemoine Company is the contractor, and The Estopinal Group is the architectural firm on the standalone building, a $28.5 million project already under way on the campus' south side facing Verot School Road. Construction on the four-story building began in February; the estimated completion date for the Park Place facility is the spring of next year (its existing Oil Center facility is being marketed by Coldwell Banker.) The first two floors of the new building are dedicated to the surgery center, the fourth will be used by Lourdes for an expansion of programs, and the third is available for lease.
Physicians, nurses and other caregivers were involved in the new design. Park Place's replacement facility will offer 10 inpatient beds, 10 operating rooms and two procedure rooms. Holding and patient recovery areas will expand by 40 percent and be separated by walls instead of curtains. Other support areas, such as waiting rooms and nurses stations, will also be roomier. Says Moore, "We really took into account patient privacy issues, which are some things that we are going to be able to incorporate into the design of our holding areas, recovery rooms, preregistration, registration and pre-admit testing."
Park Place will be connected to Lourdes' second floor surgical unit by a pedway, allowing seamless access for doctors and patients between the two facilities. Being next to the hospital will also allow Park Place patients and their families to access all of the amenities at Lourdes, including the chapel, gift shop and cafeteria. "The obvious big advantage is that we are going to be physically attached to Lourdes hospital," Breaux says. "That is going to offer Park Place the full range of medical backup and imaging backup to our patients that we don't have in the Oil Center. It will allow Park Place to do somewhat bigger cases than where we are now, because we will have medical backup for our patients who have medical and surgical issues. If they need a cardiologist or a pulmonologist, then those subspecialties are right here where patients can be seen immediately. This offers a lot of security, as far as the doctors are concerned, for our patients."
Barrow says having Park Place on Lourdes campus is also a big benefit to the main acute care hospital. "It allows us for greater integration between the hospital and our key surgical physician group," Barrow says. "One of the great blessings of health care reform is that it is allowing physicians and hospitals to think about how we can mutually work together to make the patient experience better, in terms of higher quality outcomes, more efficient care and better communication."