$22M WING EXPANSION COMPLETED AT CRESTVIEW HOSPITAL

As reported below, the 22M expansion is going to be a major asset for the City of Crestview and will be another reason for the migration to the City of Crestview.

By BRIAN HUGHES
Florida Freedom Newspapers
CRESTVIEW — The $22 million expansion at North Okaloosa Medical Center is complete, two months ahead of schedule. Construction of the 40,000-square-foot patient tower wrapped up this month. A grand opening is scheduled for Feb. 6. The addition will provide 48 more beds. Patients will be admitted Feb. 12. Hospital staffers toured the addition last week. “The rooms are so big!” imaging specialist Angela Maloy said as she stood in one of 20 private rooms in the first-floor intensive care unit. Alcoves off the nurses’ stations on the first and second floors allow crash carts, blood pressure machines and other mobile equipment to be parked safely out of hallways when not being used. The second floor’s “step down” unit’s 28 rooms also are private. The unit will replace the hospital’s progressive care unit. The existing ICU, which only has six beds, and PCU will be remodeled for other uses. The addition was designed to withstand hurricanes and can accommodate two more floors as future growth demands. For now, four ICU rooms will remain unoccupied until they are needed. Technology includes dialysis hook-ups in every ICU room. Video hook-ups allow an off-site neurologist to see a patient within the crucial first minutes of a stroke. Interventional cardiology equipment will allow the hospital to do most heart-related procedures. “Now we can do everything heart-wise except open-heart surgery,” said Rachel Neighbors, North Okaloosa Medical Center’s marketing director. The tower does have one piece of tried-and-tested oldfashioned technology. An X-ray film reader near one of the first floor nurses’ stations is the only one in the tower. “We expect everything will be digital,” said Heath Evans, the hospital’s administrative specialist who spearheaded the expansion project. For ambulatory patients and visitors, a landscaped courtyard opens off of the new facility. The large waiting room just outside the ICU includes a private consultation room for family members to meet with doctors. The new addition is expected to provide 25 to 30 new jobs at the hospital, not including the medical staff. The tower prompted improvements throughout the hospital. Ninety percent of its heating and cooling plant is new, Evans said. A new generator has been installed, and the same line of new furniture in the patient tower is being moved into all patient rooms. “The whole hospital has been so upgraded from where we were,” Evans said. With the tower complete, renovation of the second and third floors of the main hospital will follow, Neighbors said.