Elmhurst ready to open $450 million hospital

The day Pamela Dunley and her team have been planning for years will finally arrive Saturday.

At 5 a.m. June 25, the emergency department at Elmhurst Memorial Hospital on Berteau Avenue will close to ambulances and walk-ins. At the same, the ER at the hospital's new $450 million campus will begin treating its first patients.

Starting at 6 a.m., a fleet of 20 ambulances will begin making trips from the Berteau campus. Running simultaneously in two tracks leaving from different exits, the ambulances will be conveying 150 to 170 hospitalized patients — some critically ill — to the new hospital at Roosevelt and York roads.

Each trip will take just 10 to 15 minutes, but every second has been planned in meticulous detail and rehearsed three times.

The final drill was a simulation using volunteers posing as patients to practice different scenarios that could arise on even such a short trip, such as someone going into cardiac arrest.

“We've been planning (the move) since the day we decided to build the hospital,” said Dunley, vice president of patient care services and the hospital's chief nursing officer.

A year ago, the hospital hired a consulting group that has done multiple hospital moves around the country to work with the team. Staff from Sherman Hospital in Elgin, which opened a new facility 1½ years ago, shared their experiences, as well as the manual they developed for the move.

The ambulances will be pulling up to a 866,000-square-foot building that incorporates many of the latest trends in health care.

The new hospital has 259 private patient rooms, the only 320-slice CT scanner in the state and a full-size Starbucks. The architecture is Prairie style, with abundant natural wood, warm colors, water features, slate floors and natural light.

When people enter the lobby for the first time, “the reaction is pretty uniform,” said W. Peter Daniels, president and CEO of Elmhurst Memorial Healthcare. “It's a big wow.”

But the real beauty of the hospital is the way everything is designed to enhance patient care, staff members say.

“It's a dream in terms of the ability to provide state-of-the art, safe care,” Dunley said.

Moving the patients on Saturday is expected to take four to six hours. The critical care unit and family birthing center will be first. “They require the most support in the moving process,” Dunley said.

For the critical care unit, one nurse will stay with the patient for the entire move — getting the patient ready, accompanying the patient in the ambulance and up to the new room, and staying on to monitor the treatment.

New mothers and their babies will travel in the same ambulance, but women in the middle of labor won't be moved.

Ambulances are equipped to offer full medical support and backup for the entire move.

For the other units, each patient move will involve three medical teams — one at the old building, one in the ambulance and a third team to greet the patient at the new hospital.

Each patient will have a “Ticket to Ride” form with vital information. An electronic patient flow system will provide real-time tracking from the patient's bed in the old hospital up to the time he or she is settled in the new room.

Staffers will call family members to let them know their loved ones have arrived safely.

For hospital employees, it's going to be pretty much all hands on deck. The hospital will be more than double-staffed on June 25, Dunley said. In addition, more than 140 employee volunteers will help on moving day.

The old emergency department at Berteau will reopen at 8 a.m. Saturday as an immediate care center. An emergency physician will be on standby during the transition.

The hospital is getting the word out through signage, TV and radio ads and letters to patients that the old ER will be closed as of 5 a.m., but “if somebody shows up here, we will be able to triage them and send them where they need to go,” Dunley said.

Visitors to the new hospital will notice the motif of a stylized sycamore leaf — in cast stone on the exterior, carved in the wooden stair railings and embedded in the art glass.

It's not just a decoration. Hippocrates taught the first medical students under a sycamore, or plane-tree. Today, Planetree is a nonprofit organization that works with hospitals to create environments that are more patient-centered and comforting.

For example, families are seen as essential to the healing process, so there are no set visiting hours. Patients choose what and when they want to eat. Paints were chosen from a palette of colors shown to be warm and soothing; artwork features Midwest nature scenes.

“A healing environment is something we're very committed to,” said Gail Warner, vice president of strategic planning for Elmhurst Memorial Healthcare.