FAIRFIELD -- The 35-foot-high limestone totem just inside the new Mercy Center for Health and Wellness is meant to illustrate the harmony of mind, body and spirit.
Uniting traditional and alternative medical therapies is also the goal the staff thinks it can achieve. The center has been open for several weeks, but the 240,000-square-foot facility's formal open house was Saturday.
Executive Director Sean Slovenski said the idea is to make the center, at Mercy Hospital Fairfield's Mack Road campus, look like anything but a gymnasium. "The building's designed in such a way that (people) don't feel like they're in a health club," he said. "You don't feel like you're in a sweaty jock shop."
There are the usual exercise machines, racquetball and tennis courts and swimming pools of a health club, and the physical rehabilitation and speech therapy units one expects in a hospital. But there's also a health library, herbal apothecary and massage therapist, and Children's Hospital Medical Center is leasing space for outpatient services.
It's part of a concept Anita Schambach, Mercy regional director, calls integrative medicine.
"The idea is that the patient is a participant in their own plan of care and has both the choice and responsibility in participating in their care," she said. "It may be the patient elects to have surgery or chemotherapy or prayer or massage therapy. There are many options available."
Mr. Slovenski said the center is also different from other clubs in that it targets people in their 40s, 50s and 60s who don't have washboard abdominal muscles and may feel intimidated elsewhere. "It's a niche that isn't served," he said. "With the hospital, you get instant credibility."
Charter member Judy Sturgill of Fairfield spent part of Saturday with her face buried in a cushion as part of a neck massage. "I'm 39, and I lost my husband two years ago," she said. "I'm going to start the second half of my life, and I want to concentrate on good health and being in a good spirit."
A second center will open in July at Mercy Hospital in Anderson Township.
