St. Anthony Pavilion to deliver hope with state-of-the-art care
story and photo by James Coburn
Progress continues for the St. Anthony Pavilion at St. Anthony Hospital in midtown Oklahoma City. The new 110,000-square-foot building is under construction at 10th Street and Dewey.
Total construction cost including equipment is $53 million, said George Benard, RN, division director for Emergency Services for St. Anthony’s emergency care in the metroplex.
“This has been part of the expansion of St. Anthony for the expansion of better serving our community,” Benard said. “We’ve opened our fourth healthplex and now we’ve moved on to the pavilion stage, which will be our brand new, state-of-the art, 36-bed ER.”
Groundbreaking took place in May. 2014; the building’s completion is anticipated at the end of May or first of June of next year.
The four-story structure will be complete with brick. stone, stucco with a glass exterior and a new roof-top heliport. It will connect at the northeast wing and through the existing east entrance to the hospital.
“Services provided will include a new emergency room, intensive care unit and step-down nursing units,” Benard said.
“The first floor is all emergency services. The second, third and fourth are a telemetry unit and critical care units,” he continued.
A previously completed phase of the project involved the addition of surface parking in order to make room for the new structure. The surface parking is located on the block between 8th and 9th Streets and Dewey and Walker.
The entrance currently off of 9th Street will change to the Walker side of the building for emergency room patients and those patients being transferred there by EMSA.
The configuration of the St. Anthony Pavilion will compliment the needs of patient care with easy access for physicians, nurses, patients and family members as well as related hospital staff.
There will be 48 critical care beds.
“Our critical care director, Darla Wilson, has been directly involved with all of the critical care beds and how they’ve set it up,” Benard said. “This has actually been a five-year project for the Pavilion.”
The two existing ER facilities for cardiac services and the main ER will operate from the new facility while gaining beds.
The same physician group that serves all of St. Anthony’s ERs is the Team Health Physician Group and will continue as Dr. Chad Boren is its medical director. Courtney Myers, RN, serves as director of the St. Anthony emergency department.
“I love to get trauma patients, so I’m excited to get a new building and CC (critical care) is close to us,” Myers said. “So I feel like we’re going to be more marketable. We’ll also get a second helicopter pad, so we’ll be able to take more helicopters from the field.” A stroke patient from rural Oklahoma was recently transported to St. Anthony for neurological care. The hospital is geared for any type of trauma, she said. Transfers are also made from other facilities.
“Our affiliate hospitals that we have throughout the state also transfer patients,” Benard said. “Currently, our helipad is located on our west parking garage. We will actually have the helipad on the Pavilion itself with an elevator that goes right to it to better serve us and the patients that are being brought in and going to the critical care units and the cath lab.”
All of the ER equipment is being updated, a process that has been in place with the development of the St. Anthony Heathplex systems, Myers said.
“The newest thing that we’ve got is a brand new level 1 fluid infuser,” Myers said. “We can infuse fluid or blood products very rapidly to someone who needs them.”
Myers is also happy about a new area designed in the ER for mental health patients, she said.
“It’s state-of-the-art for anywhere in Oklahoma to be thinking emergency rooms with a lot of mental health patients. It will be greatly improved in the new building. It will have its own quiet, safe area. It’s just a better value for those patients.”
A new CT-scan will be added to the department in line with the trauma rooms. The physicians’ rooms will face toward those areas.
The hospital staggers the amount of nurses in the ER. The day begins with seven ER nurses in the department. Four more nurses are added at 11 a.m. and another RN at 3 p.m.
“I truly have the love for the emergency population,” Benard said. “It’s ever-changing, and you’re always a student. You’re always learning something new every day.”
Myers has been with the St. Anthony ER for 11 of the 17 years she has served there.
“The thing I love about the emergency room is you never know what’s going to come through,” she said. “It’s just the opportunity to touch this volume of lives. You’re not just touching the patient. You’re touching all the families.”
