Revamp to improve mental health area
Natural light streams through a skylight. A dedicated shower and bathroom provides privacy. Two new safe rooms, with the ability to “swing” two more, provide a refuge from the hustle and bustle of the emergency department. For a small town Emergency Room, the newly renovated behavioral health area of the Cheshire Medical Center/Dartmouth Hitchcock Keene is seeing a renovation any bigger hospital would envy.
After breaking ground last May, the hospital’s renovation project has been keeping pace with projections. The plan, approved by the New Hampshire State Department of Health and Human Services, will see only a slight expansion in square-footage but an overall re-design of how the space is used.
“We are not increasing the overall bed count,” said Amy Matthews, RN, CEN, director of the emergency department, “but we are looking to make the space more efficient, patient-centered and to make individual treatment spaces larger.”
The project, set to be completed later this spring, will provide enhanced technology and staffing areas as well as treatment rooms for all emergency patients – rather than the open space and movable curtains in use for the past decade.
“The curtains offered no privacy,” said Matthews. “We are now going to all private universal beds.”
For behavioral health clients, the plan was to create a space that would provide greater privacy, without being completely isolated, as well as flexibility to deal with fluctuation within patient needs.
“Within the state of New Hampshire,” said Matthews, “there has been a problem with extended lengths of stay in emergency departments, some approaching two weeks, while waiting for an appropriate bed to be available.”
The space, recently completed as part of phase two of the project, features two dedicated “safe” rooms, designed to protect patients who may be in danger of hurting themselves or others, explained Matthews, as well as two “swing” rooms that can be used for traditional medical care or quickly converted to safe rooms.
“On a Tuesday night, you might need all of the four rooms for behavioral health but on Wednesday you might have a higher medical load,” said Matthews, who pointed out that for certain patients, medical care may transition into behavioral health care as the patient is stabilized. “This type of flexible space is more appropriate for what we do as a community hospital emergency department.”
The new design for the behavioral health area includes natural lighting through skylights, a wider hallway, a dedicated bathroom and shower in close proximity, as well as space for staff and security if needed
“This was the first patient care area that we addressed as part of the renovation,” said Matthews. “We are now a little more than half way through the renovation of the clinical space of the ED.”
The project is estimated to cost $2.2 million and has been funded, in part, by donations along with financing from the hospital itself.