THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, January 18, 1995 TAG: 9501180403
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY LON WAGNER, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: HAMPTON LENGTH: Medium: 62 lines
Sentara Health System unveiled Tuesday a new $10.5 million outpatient facility that it thinks could be an alternative to crowded emergency rooms.
The facility, called CarePlex, could become a model for the way health care is administered throughout Hampton Roads. CarePlex will serve as both a 24-hour emergency center and an outpatient facility. CarePlex will take its first patients Jan. 23.
Sentara designed the center to handle more routine ``emergency'' cases and fewer traumatic care patients. The health-care provider had discovered that about 80 percent of emergency room visits on the Peninsula were for routine problems.
``When research showed that most emergency patients do not need sophisticated monitoring, we realized we should design the emergency department to treat the majority of the patients needs, rather than the minority,'' said Carl Gaborik, director of CarePlex.
At the CarePlex, there are no waiting rooms, no central nurses' stations and no colored lines to follow around the building. And at least for now, no patients will be admitted for overnight procedures.
The 60,000 square-foot glass and brick building on Coliseum Drive is being touted as a model of patient-centered health care. Patients entering the building will use one set of doors, move through their treatment and leave through a separate set of doors.
A drive-up patient pickup area is separate from the entrance.
The building's design places a premium on privacy, which was a concern of patients whowere surveyed during the course of laying out the facility.
There are 38 bathrooms in the building. Even though there will be no overnight patients, 12 private patient treatment rooms have adjoining bathrooms. There are even small openings between the bathrooms and a laboratory so patients don't have to walk around the corridors carrying urine samples.
``Although we will be able to treat twice as many people as the HOPE center, this design accommodates flow so that most patients will never see each other,'' Gaborik said.
For Peninsula residents, the CarePlex will replace nearly all of the functions of HOPE Medical Center. The HOPE center will continue to offer dialysis services, but the rest of the building will be used by the Hampton Health Department.
Sentara CEO Glenn Mitchell predicted Sentara would copy the concept in Hampton Roads.
``I wouldn't be a bit surprised to see facilities around the community that are sponsored by us look like this,'' Mitchell said, ``and maybe some sponsored by others.''
Gaborik said Sentara's plans for the 60-acre ``health-care campus'' include adding 45,000 square feet for physicians' office space and ambulatory services. The second phase will also have a cancer-treatment center, a pharmacy and doctors' offices.
``You can visit your primary or specialty physician and immediately follow up with the recommended diagnostic or treatment procedures just a few steps away,'' Gaborik said. by CNB