Mark Andersen / Lincoln Journal Star | Posted: Wednesday, October 5, 2005 7:00 pm
Walking through the $5 million addition to Lincoln Surgical Hospital on Wednesday, administrators joked they should hold a raffle with the winner getting a free weekend in a new patient room.
The humor lies within the joke’s plausibility.
Wood floors, flat-screen TVs, all electronics and medical gasses hidden behind decorative cabinets — the features combine to give these patient rooms a resort-like feel.
That was the goal, said Robb Linafelter, chief executive officer. “I wanted it to look like Embassy Suites.”
Patient rooms may have a hotel feel, but the remainder of the addition finally creates the impression that this really is a hospital.
“What we were doing in this facility up to now,” Linafelter said, “we were never designed for it.”
Additions include a board room, family waiting area, pre-operative holding area, physician lounge, physician showers, a cafeteria – with an entire wall dedicated to a granite water feature – and deluxe operating rooms. The latter come equipped with multiple plasma screens for simultaneous viewing of electronic X-rays and orthopedic video images.
The physician-owned, for-profit hospital at 1710 S. 70th St. is one of about 100 multi-specialty surgical hospitals in the United States. It opened as an outpatient surgery center in 1994 and converted to a surgical hospital in 2003, opening the door to total-knee and total-hip replacements.
With this addition, Linafelter said, it will add neurological and spinal procedures. The list of capabilities has grown steadily and now includes ophthalmology; orthopedics; plastic; ear, nose and throat; gynecology; neurosurgery; general surgery; podiatry and oral surgery.
Business has grown about 15 percent each year, Linafelter said.
“Our expansion is a direct result of the increased demand of services from our patients and surgeons,” he said.
The first procedure in a new operating room will take place a week from Friday.
Construction began in April of last year, although little of it has been visible from the front of the building. The addition took form in what had been a backyard courtyard.
Dr. Greg Sutton, one of the hospital’s managing partners, said the completed project exceeded investors expectations.
“The warmth that the atmosphere and design portrays is of a healing environment,” he said.
The Lincoln Surgical Hospital is now regarded as a model facility, he said. Just recently, the partners were on a conference call to hospital administrators in Australia.
Linafelter boasted the facility now has 100 percent electronic patient records, 24-hour digital radiology, and an on-site laboratory, along with a range of therapy services provided in partnership with Madonna Rehabilitation Hospital.
Charges, meanwhile, are about 80 percent of what Lincoln’s general hospitals bill for the same procedures, he said.
“The true winner in all of this is the patients in Lincoln and the surrounding area,” Linafelter said.
The growth of the surgical hospital adds to the area’s health care competition, he said, but it doesn’t threaten the older institutions.
“We believe the pie is getting bigger,” he said. The area served by Lincoln health care facilities is growing, he said. There is enough business to support the surgical hospital plus Saint Elizabeth Regional Medical Center, BryanLGH Medical Center and NHI Heart Hospital, “all working together in a cooperative environment,” he said.
At the same time, he added, “The bar definitely has been raised.”
Reach Mark Andersen at 473-7238 or mandersen@journalstar.com
By the numbers:
Lincoln Surgical Hospital
5 — million dollars spent on expansion
8 — operating rooms after three added
16 — private patient rooms
80 — surgeons did procedures there last year
9,000 — or more surgeries expected in 2006
6,805 — surgeries performed last year
45,000 — square feet of space