Hospital open house tour
As appeared in the July 23, 2008 edition of The Chatham News
An eager crowd filed into Chatham Hospital's atrium and spilled out on to the sidewalk as the people waited to tour the new facility Sunday. Chatham Hospital staff and the Hospital Auxiliary nurses led tour groups of 15 people through the recently completed halls at an open house celebration Sunday, July 20 at 2 p.m. So many people came to tour the facility that they were forced to park along the sides of Progress Boulevard and in an open field behind the hospital.
The tour began in Chatham Hospital's emergency room, where Auxiliary nurses compared it to the old hospital's emergency facility. The old facility's emergency room, built in the late Nineties, was constructed before patient privacy was an issue. The old hospital emergency care rooms did not have doors but had curtains. The new facility has eight single patient rooms and two cardiac trauma rooms. The cardiac trauma rooms serve two patients and are divided by a curtain.
The imaging department boasts a new 16-slice CT scanning machine. "We currently only have a four-slice scanner," said radiographer Tina Ritter. "We also will offer digital x-ray and mammography, which we don't have now. "We will be able to offer the same state-of-the-art radiology services other hospitals offer."
Although Chatham Hospital is licensed for two operating rooms, the old building had only one. The new facility has two operating rooms, both of which are twice the size of the old facility's operating room. Registered nurse Paula Barrows said Chatham Hospital will now have four intensive care unit rooms. "Each of the rooms will serve one patient," she said.
"All of the rooms are equipped with flat screen televisions, private bathrooms and doors instead of curtains," she said. There are 21 acute care rooms in the hospital, two of which were set up during the tour. The rooms, which are double in size from the patient rooms in the old hospital, have a private bathroom and shower and will serve one patient.
Chatham Hospital's replacement hospital will open at 7 a.m. July 28 in Central Carolina Business Park. The 25-bed facility will oc-cupy a 30-acre site and will be used for surgeries, sleep studies, orthopedics, radiology and critical care.
ABOUT UNC HEALTH CARE
The UNC Health Care System is a not-for-profit integrated health care system owned by the state of North Carolina and based in Chapel Hill. It exists to further the teaching mission of the University of North Carolina and to provide state-of-the-art patient care. UNC Health Care is comprised of UNC Hospitals, which is ranked among the top 50 in the nation in six specialties by U.S. News & World Report and ranked one of the country's 41 best on the Leapfrog 2007 Top Hospitals list; the UNC School of Medicine, a nationally eminent research institution; community practices; home health and hospice services in seven central North Carolina counties; and Rex Healthcare and its provider network in Wake County.
