Saint Mary’s Health Care will triple the size of its emergency services department, as well as adding a comprehensive neuroscience facility when it opens the Hauenstein Center in 2008.

Hauenstein Center Preview
By Kevin Murphy

GRAND RAPIDS — Five years from now, the neighborhood surrounding Saint Mary’s hospital will look very different than it does today.

Mary Free Bed Rehabilitation Hospital recently purchased the landmark Schnitzelbank restaurant to make room for future expansion. Saint Mary’s Health Care bought approximately four acres of commercial property from nearby Eerdman’s Publishing Co., also considering future growth. The American Cancer Society’s Hope Lodge facility will be built adjacent to Saint Mary’s campus. Within a matter of months, the outdated Xavier office building on Saint Mary’s campus will fall to the wrecking ball, making way for the health system’s “most ambitious project ever”: the multi-purpose Hauenstein Center.

The new 140,000-square-foot facility is a study in multiples. With over 32,000 square feet of floor space, the new emergency department will more than triple the size of Saint Mary’s current facility. Today’s 25 treatment bays will be replaced by 45 private rooms. The current 14-bed critical care unit will give way to a 32-bed unit, also featuring private rooms.

In addition to increasing the size of existing facilities, Saint Mary’s is also rethinking the care it offers and the manner in which it is delivered.

“We’re focusing a lot on safe space and spiritual space, or contemplative space for staff and physicians, given the high stress in that environment — making sure that there are spaces available for people to be able to decompress, to breathe, to get away,” said Tom Stankewicz, director of strategic planning and project manager for the Hauenstein Center construction. “The focus of it will be on amenities for the patients, making it more of a lounge-type feel than a bus station.”

One way that focus will be manifest is in the “universal bed” concept.

“So in theory we don’t have to move the patient,” said Stankewicz. “Once they’re there, they can be an intermediate patient, or they can be a critical care patient. So we move the equipment in and out and change the staffing mix, as opposed to shuffling you around from room to room to room to room. That has a huge advantage, both from a coordination-of-care standpoint, but also from patient safety and quality.”

The most ambitious new programs to be housed in the Hauenstein Center will be Saint Mary’s neurosciences units. The second and fourth floors of the center will comprise “a comprehensive, one-stop center of excellence for all your inpatient and outpatient needs relative to neurosciences,” according to Stankewicz. The second level will specialize in the consolidated treatment of epilepsy, Alzheimer’s and other memory-loss disorders, Parkinson’s disease, stroke and spine disorders. The center will bring together complete medical treatment, as well as room for physical therapy, counseling and interaction with support organizations such as the Alzheimer’s Association.

The fourth floor will have 30 private rooms for patients receiving neurological treatment. The floor also will house a four-bed epilepsy monitoring unit. Although that program won’t officially begin until later this year, there is already a waiting list of potential patients.

Of course, before any of these programs can begin in earnest, the facility must be built. To make way, 300 employees with offices in the Xavier building will be moved to other facilities throughout Grand Rapids. Then, the careful demolition begins.

Care will be taken in the demolition because it is the first step in the lengthy, laborious road to achieving Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design “Silver” certification.

“We have to recycle a certain high percentage of what comes out of here. It was 90 percent of the McAuley building,” said Saint Mary’s Vice President of Development Micki Benz, referring to the structure that was demolished to make way for the adjacent LEED-certified Lacks Cancer Center. “God knows how, the place was a dump! I don’t know how they did it, but we’ll be doing the same thing again here.”

Although the silver standard is considered very difficult for a health care facility to achieve, Saint Mary’s is attempting to win that distinction for the Hauenstein Center, as well as its southwest outpatient facility currently under construction in Byron Township. In addition to the recycling requirements, the build team is carefully considering energy conservation and generation technologies, the use of local materials, and other “green” strategies that will help in obtaining the prestigious LEED certification.

When the Hauenstein Center opens, Saint Mary’s hopes that it will become a regional health care destination. By partnering with the Van Andel Institute and Michigan State University’s College of Human Medicine, the health system hopes to make the center a desirable research destination. By offering unique, highly specialized programs in neuroscience, Saint Mary’s hopes that the center will also draw a patient base from across West Michigan and beyond. In the year since the opening of the Lacks Cancer Center, that regional draw is already beginning, according to Debbie Stiemann, vice president of strategic development.

“The number of people (we serve) outside of our traditional service areas is double what it was last year at this time,” she said.

Construction on the Hauenstein Center is expected to begin in June. The center is scheduled to open in mid-2008.       BJX