Saturday, January 30, 2016
The expansion of TriHealth’s Bethesda Butler Hospital, which includes 32 new private patient rooms, will open Monday, according to the hospital network.
The project brings Bethesda Butler from its previous eight inpatient beds to a total of 46, said Chuck Brown, executive director of administration for Bethesda Butler. Six of the 32 new patient rooms are intensive care units.
Approximately 51,000-square-feet was built on to the hospital building on Hamilton Mason Road, but the total cost of the investment was not disclosed by TriHealth.
“It almost feels like we’re opening a new hospital even though this is an expansion of services,” Brown said. “We’re talking about a game-changing type of facility for us.”
For the service expansion, Bethesda Butler hired about 70 new people, bringing the total number of employees to 200, not counting doctors, Brown said.
There’s also room for future growth at the site depending on community needs.
The building addition was constructed to allow for another floor to be added in the future, plus the Hamilton campus also has room to fit another building, said Steve Mombach, vice president of ambulatory services for TriHealth.
“This seems to be a relatively underserved area,” said internal medicine specialist Dr. Bryan Strader.
“We’re going to be bringing out all of the key service lines that are necessary to take care of sick patients as well as regular hospital patients,” he said. “That includes cardiology, pulmonary critical care, internal medicine, general surgery and (gastrointestinal).”
However, Bethesda Butler does not have a catheterization lab, so some of the most severe cardiology patients, for example, could still be transferred to Cincinnati, Strader said.
The completion of the multi-year project marks the latest in a series of expansions at the medical campus since TriHealth acquired it in 2012. Between then and now, TriHealth also opened an emergency department at the Hamilton Mason Road site.
Elsewhere in Butler County, following the purchase of the former Butler County Medical Center, TriHealth has also reached an affiliation agreement with McCullough-Hyde Memorial Hospital in Oxford, opened a new medical office building in West Chester Twp. for its Group Health doctor practice, and formed a partnership with Liberty Center in Liberty Twp.
journal-news.com
