New hospital will benefit the area

Talk about it

Jamestown Regional Medical Center opens July 31 after several years of deliberations and development. We applaud those involved because we see so many benefits for the Jamestown area. In addition to the proximity of more types and a better quality of care, economic officials also predict the area will see advantages like individuals spending money here and employers setting up shop.

We look forward to the opening of Jamestown Regional Medical Center, although like most area residents, we hope we rarely require its use.

But if and when we do, we know the hospital is designed to care for patients more efficiently in a state-of-the-art facility with the latest technology.

Starting from our neighbors’ first days on Earth, the new Family BirthPlace offers bigger and more comfortable rooms for infants and their families. The rooms are wired and ready for any equipment a newborn may need, like a warmer or an oxygen mask. That means the facility can offer care, especially in a time of distress, faster and without leaving mom’s side. At the current Jamestown Hospital, nurses carry a baby in distress to the nursery, away from a mother as she awaits the newborn child.

In the surgery department, the new facility offers three operating rooms instead of the current two. That means the 130 patients under the knife each month for a number of conditions won’t have to wait as long for their procedures.

In an emergency, the new medical center offers more privacy. At the current hospital, ER patients are treated in a “big room with three beds,” a hospital official said. The new medical center offers two separate trauma rooms as well as two infusion rooms — where drugs are administered by intravenous lines — which can also be used as trauma rooms if the need arises.

The new Emergency Department also offers access to an on-site helipad where a medical helicopter can take off and land directly at the medical center. At the current hospital, an ambulance picks up a patient in need of a transfer and drives them to the Jamestown Regional Airport where the patient is then flown to another facility. The helipad gets the patient to treatment faster and costs less than transfers via ground ambulance.

In addition to improvements to current offerings, the hospital also plans to offer new services. Already, it has hired an orthopedic surgeon and looks to hire another. The medical center’s want ads also seek a urologist, oncologist and a neurologist. This means Jamestown area residents won’t have to travel 100 miles or more for those kinds of services, which not only saves time and money, but also offers a better quality of care. Who wants to ride in a car all morning or afternoon when they aren’t feeling well?

Plus, those offerings bring new and well-paying jobs to the city. Economists expect additional business like hotels and restaurants to locate in the green space in Jamestown simply because of the medical center’s existence.

Lutheran Social Services will remodel the current hospital building into houses for seniors and those requiring assisted living, so we don’t foresee a big change to the bottom lines downtown.

Of course, with anything new come challenges and a learning curve.

Our biggest concerns include access to the hospital in bad weather and the time it will take for residents (not to mention physicians in a time of distress) in northeast Jamestown to access the facility. But the medical center is holding drills prior to its opening so the staff is ready before the first patient arrives. We’re confident the staff will solve any potential kinks before they become a serious issue.

On the whole, this is an impressive facility that will benefit Jamestown and the nine-county region the medical center serves.

(Editorials are the opinion of Jamestown Sun management and the newspaper’s editorial board)

Tags: opinion, editorials, hospital