Ringgold hospital taking shape
By LARRY PETERSON - CNA assistant managing editor lpeterson@crestonnews.com
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| Visitors arriving at the new Ringgold County Hospital will enter an area illuminated by a series of overhead windows in the circular design of the central registration section. (LARRY PETERSON) |
MOUNT AYR — Construction is about halfway complete on a 61,000-square-feet hospital here, replacing a 1951 facility barely more than half the size of the new medical complex.
The Ringgold County Hospital under construction east of the intersection of Highway 169 and East Columbus Street on the east edge of Mount Ayr, is scheduled to open January 2010. Groundbreaking ceremonies for the $27 million project were held in October 2008.
The original 1951 building is much smaller at 39,000 square feet, including expansions in 1971 and 1972, and a physicians clinic added in 2000. But size isn’t necessarily the primary problem, as the hospital’s board of trustees began reviewing options three years ago.
“A lot of those discussions in 2006 centered on the idea, as technology changes, how are we going to incorporate that with our building?” said Gordon Winkler, Ringgold County Hospital administrator. “There are environmental issues in the building in terms of temperature and humidity control. The question was, what were we going to do to solve those problems?”
Any kind of renovation and addition plan to the land-locked 1951 hospital was going to be at least as expensive as erecting a new building. And then, Winkler said, the problem of outdated infrastructure and electrical/mechanical systems would not be solved.
Facility problems
“The core 1951 building has problems in terms of modern medicine services,” Winkler said. “The plumbing is eroding. Heating and cooling is a combination of several different systems. We have plaster and block walls and we’re trying to run data lines. It’s difficult.”
A certificate of need was filed with the state to build a replacement hospital. In a hearing on April 15, 2008, the proposal was unanimously approved.
USDA Rural Development is providing a $14.5 million guaranteed loan to ArborOne ACA, a member of the Farm Credit System, and an $8.7 million direct loan to the hospital to help with the funding.
Ringgold County Hospital is one of 82 critical access hospitals in Iowa — facilities located in rural communities more than 35 miles from another hospital with no more than 25 beds, which provide emergency care 24 hours a day and provide both inpatient and outpatient care.
Winkler said the current hospital on Shellway Drive was built during an era when medical care revolved around lengthy inpatient hospital stays. Outpatient diagnostic testing was typically performed only in connection with emergency room visits.
Now, that ratio is reversed, with a shift to primarily outpatient care with only acute conditions requiring actual inpatient hospitalization. Even surgical patients are routinely discharged the next day, or even the same day for outpatient procedures.
The new facility was designed for “functional space,” according to Rob Stackhouse, director of plant maintenance. It will have 16 private patient rooms.
The north half of the new facility includes patient wings, emergency treatment area and ambulance bays. All mechanical/engineering stations are on the rear (east) of the building along a service entrance. On the south side is the food service and cafeteria area with a multipurpose room, and a dialysis unit easily accessible from the parking lot.
Physicians clinics and specialty clinics are located in the center, just off the main entrance, with laboratory and radiology services easily reached from either the doctors’ clinic rooms or specialty clinics. Nurses stations are handy for both ER or acute care areas, a major difference from the current facility.
The operating room is twice the size of the current hospital, which is easier for some of the orthopedic joint-replacement surgical procedures becoming popular. It has state-of-the-art digital panels for surgical staff use. Recovery areas also provide more room.
The orthopedic treatment area now includes a hydro-therapy pool to do weight-bearing exercises sooner in the buoyancy of water of varying depths.
Staff input
“We had user input in the design,” Winkler said. “Department heads listed what they needed in space to do their job. It was functional planning, and the design kind of developed itself. We have one central registration area for all of our health care services. Several hospitals have come to look at our design. We’ve had calls from Pennsylvania, Kansas, a lot of different places.”
Yanik Companies of Spring Park, Minn., is the hospital’s designer and representative in the building project, and Graham Construction of Des Moines is the construction management firm.
