Sunday, January 17, 1999
Face-lift to give Good Sam new life
BY TIM BONFIELD
The Cincinnati Enquirer
A $5.2 million face-lift for Greater Cincinnati's busiest maternity service starts Monday.
Good Samaritan Hospital, which delivered about 5,150 of the 29,400 Tristate babies born in 1997, plans to devote an entire floor to its expanding neonatal intensive care unit, while filling another floor with private recovery rooms for mothers and their infants.
Patients begin moving today for construction that starts in March and would be complete by early 2000. The project would double the floor space of the neonatal intensive care unit and boost the number of bassinets from 37 to 47.
“We need more room around the bassinets for equipment and for families to spend time with their babies,” said John Sanders, director of perinatal services at TriHealth, the hospital group that includes Good Samaritan, Bethesda North and Bethesda Oak hospitals.
The Good Samaritan neonatal intensive care unit treats nearly 1,000 babies a year, including the tiniest premature infants and other newborns with serious illnesses.
The hospital is adding bassinets because intensive care occupancy rates have been running above 90 percent for the past 18 months. The high occupancy rates are closely linked to Good Samaritan attracting more women with high-risk pregnancies, Mr. Sanders said.
The refurbished intensive care unit will have upgraded equipment, more private spaces for breast-feeding, a classroom and a library of infant health materials.
Making space for the expansion required reshuffling several other services.
Until now, the intensive care unit has shared the ninth floor with the mother-baby unit, which offered 10 private and 20 semi-private rooms.
Starting today, women who deliver at Good Samaritan will spend their recovery time on the 13th floor, in one of 39 private rooms. The rooms are equipped with new baby warmers and bigger pull-out beds for fathers.
To make room, the hospital moved an orthopedic care unit and relocated resident physician quarters.
University Hospital will be the only local maternity service using semi-private rooms.
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