Our Lady of Fatima Hospital is opening a new, $8 million surgical center, which is the culmination of a 10-year restructuring effort.
The North Providence hospital planned to open the 18,000 square-foot facility Monday, August 6, to replace a cramped, 40-year-old operating room. Hospital officials say it is one of the region’s most technologically advanced inpatient surgical centers.
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“We want to be able to practice state-of-the-art care not only in 2001 but in 2020,” said H. John Keimig, president of St. Joseph Health Services of Rhode Island, the umbrella designation which comprises the two major Roman Catholic medical facilities in the state. “(The center has) been designed to accommodate new technology that might come down the pike many years from now.”
The Bishop Louis E. Gelineau Surgical Pavilion has six general surgery suites to accommodate most inpatient surgical procedures, including cardiovascular, orthopedic, podiatric, ophthalmologic, gynecological, laproscopic and plastic surgeries. Two more operating rooms are dedicated to urology.
A ceiling-mounted orbiter system in each operating room moves bulky surgical and patient-monitoring equipment from the floor to the ceiling, where it’s hydraulically suspended to give doctors, nurses and technicians greater mobility. Medical gases such as oxygen and nitrous oxide are piped through overhead booms for easy administration.
The urology suites – given high priority at the state’s busiest endoscopy center – feature $450,000 operating tables with built-in radiology units.
Voice-activated surgical instruments will be used throughout the center. Each of the operating suites is wired with high-speed fiber optics for teleconferencing between rooms.
While doctors and nurses welcome the new technologies, Keimig said the new facility also will ease the surgical experience for patients. There are individual rooms for pre- and post-operative patients and physician consultations and patients’ families will have private waiting rooms.
The new center is needed to accommodate the growing surgical workload at Fatima, which has become one of the state’s busiest acute-care hospitals. With more than 16,000 outpatient surgeries annually, Fatima performs more ambulatory surgeries and endoscopy procedures than any hospital in Rhode Island, hospital officials said. Its emergency room is the state’s third busiest.
Two more capital-improvement projects will begin this week.
The old operating rooms will be gutted and rebuilt to house a new breast-care center. Keimig said that space, which also will include new dressing rooms, offices, post-operative recovery rooms and lounges, should be completed next year.
Fatima also plans to renovate the inpatient-care units on its nursing floors, which should be finished next summer. The hospital will spend about $4 million on those projects, bringing the total capital expenditure to $12 million.
Money for the projects was raised through a tax-exempt bond issued two years ago as well as millions of dollars reaped from Fatima’s fundraising campaign, which included an anonymous $800,000 donation.
The construction projects cap off a strategic plan laid out 10 years ago to eliminate duplicate services offered at Fatima and St. Joseph’s Hospital, which compose St. Joseph Health Services of Rhode Island.
While St. Joe’s has morphed into a specialty care facility, Fatima has emerged as a 200-bed, acute-care medical provider. Additions have included an ambulatory care center and the hospital’s Critical Care Pavilion, opened in 1994.
“We have no endowments and no foundation, so we’ve had to operate in a very efficient and business-like way,” said Keimig, who added that the hospital has been in the black for eight consecutive years. “To issue a 10-year plan and meet 90 percent of your deadlines I’d say is a success.”
