No more Band-aids
Methodist seeks OK for $33M ER expansion
Methodist University Hospital will seek state approval of a $33.5 million expansion and renovation of its crowded, outdated emergency department quarters.
Methodist HealthCare trustees voted in July to approve the project, which will be submitted Wednesday to the Tennessee Health Services Development Agency in Nashville for a certificate of need.
The ER, which has received only patchwork renovations over 40-plus years, has been running at capacity and desperately needs more room to serve patients from Midtown, Downtown and the region, chief operating officer Jamie Carter said.
“We’re pretty much taxed in the square footage that we’re in, with the number of visits we’re seeing. We’re at capacity, although we obviously have contingency plans if we get a surge (of patients),” Carter added.
The project would transform the Eastmoreland Av- enue side of the hospital, where the hospital’s main entrance and ER are located. It would take out a pair of aging doctor’s office
buildings at the southwest corner of the hospital complex to make way for a two-story emergency department with a rooftop heliport and an ambulance entrance and parking on the first level.
The main entrance and lobby for hospital admissions will need to be reconfigured, although final plans haven’t been drawn by project architect brg3s, Carter said.
Plans call for 93,000 square feet of new space and 6,200 square feet of renovated space, adding 16 patient treatment areas to bring total treatment areas to 54.
The expanded department would accommodate 70,000 patients annually. ER visits skyrocketed to 56,000 in 2011 from 46,500 in 2007.
Officials hope to received approval of the certificate of need by mid November, begin demolition of doctor’s office buildings early next year and complete the project in 2014. The office buildings should be vacated by Dec. 1, Carter said.
A Methodist ER expansion would be the latest in a series of investments planned in the medical center area, most recently a Regional Medical Center at Memphis proposal for $32.4 million in improvements.
The Med plan would spend $30 million to build on three unfinished floors at Turner Tower on Madison and $2.4 million to expand the Elvis Presley Memorial Trauma Center.
“We are committed to Midtown and the Downtown medical center area and believe that this renovation and expansion will allow us to better serve our patients in those areas and beyond,” Carter said.
Carter said hospital officials believe expansion of the ER needs to happen regardless of the outcome of a national political debate over health care policy.
Methodist University is a teaching center affiliated with the University of Tennessee Health Science Center and is recognized by The Joint Commission as a center for heart attack and stroke treatment.
“We believe this is a real opportunity to continue to grow those areas that we accommodate in our emergency department. It will give us the ability to enhance those services and be a state-ofthe-art emergency department here in this area of Memphis,” Carter said.
The facility will be designed to green-building standards, and the hospital plans to seek a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, or LEED, certification.
“With this renovation and expansion, we will have better flow to allow our clinicians to deliver better quality care with greater efficiency,” Carter said. “It will also create a more practical space for our EMS community. They will be able to offload patients faster, and the new design will be a much more user-friendly for patients and EMS staff with more shelter from the elements.”
He added, “Just as we are doing all across our health system, patients and families will have a say in the planning of the new emergency department. With their input we will gain the benefit of their help and insights to create the best space to deliver care.”