UMASS MEMORIAL MEDICAL CENTER H8 MEDICAL SURGICAL NURSING UNIT & COMPOUNDING PHARMACY

Improvements for this new Medical Surgical Nursing unit include 24 new private patient rooms, which includes a VIP/ Palliative Care suite and patient room, and an Airborne Infection Isolation (AII) patient room. Additionally, improvements include, staff support spaces, a staff lounge with staff lockers, two modern centralized team stations, a nourishment room, required clinical support spaces, and a centrally located compounding pharmacy.

Beds at the Memorial Campus are not fully utilized in many multi-bedded rooms as patients’ needs for private beds become more evident. UMass Medical’s focus to keep quality and safety satisfaction high, requires additional private rooms. Creating a higher percentage of private beds at Memorial better serves the population that results from elective surgery cases at Memorial Hospital and the increased number of patients requiring beds with isolation. The increased demand for more private beds at University campus will relieve the backups in the ED and limit incidents of Code Help. Currently there is a high frequency of Code Help which often will eventually trigger the emergency disaster plan. Background on these needs are as follows:

UMass Memorial Medical Center has experienced a 8.6% increase YTD in acute care admissions over FY15 resulting in continual high Emergency Department boarding hours. Through simulation it has been identified the need for 50 acute care beds to maintain an 85% occupancy rate that by industry standards is the rate which enables positive patient flow. Current medical surgical occupancy rate at the University campus is 93.2%. Establishing an additional 28-33 beds on the medical surgical unit on H8 at the University campus would improve patient flow, quality of care, and improve the patient and staff experience.

This project adds a new 16-bed medical surgical nursing unit and renovates an existing 8-bed medical surgical nursing unit. This 16-bed unit plus the 8-bed renovation unit accounts for 24 of the 28-33 beds needed to support the specialized services of HVAC, medical gas upgrades needed, and clinical support spaces needed.

Healthcare Snapshots Article