SOUTHAVEN — Since opening as a community hospital in 1988, Baptist Memorial Hospital-DeSoto has evolved into a major Memphis metro-area player in healthcare. Its staff of 1,850 employees — DeSoto County's largest private employer — are projected to service more than 50,000 emergency room visitors, 2,100 newborns, and 15,000 hospital patients in fiscal year 2009.

 

The full-service hospital, with the exception of organ transplants and craniotomies, has 192 acute care beds, 30 physical rehabilitation beds, 36 intensive care unit (ICU) beds, 48 step-down beds and 33 delivery beds. It was among the first hospitals in North Mississippi to pioneer PET scanner services; it was also the first hospital in the state to offer Diamondback 360 Orbital Atherectomy. Among DeSoto County firsts: open-heart surgery, radiation therapy and open MRI. Last year and again in 2009, DataAdvantage named Baptist DeSoto a national Best in Value Hospital.

 

"Baptist DeSoto is an exciting and innovative institution, and the services and staff are dynamic," said assistant administrator Walter Grace, who joined Memphis-based Baptist Healthcare Corporation in 1996 and relocated to Baptist DeSoto in 2002. "The work we do paints a picture of our journey to excellence, to constantly adapt to the needs of the community." Randy King serves as hospital administrator and CEO; Tapan Thakur, MD, leads the medical staff.

 

The second largest hospital corporate-wide, Baptist DeSoto expanded slowly at first. A few years after the hospital opened, the emergency department was enlarged. In 2001, a new Women's Pavilion expanded the hospital's reach with the addition of a 33-bed OB/GYN and labor and delivery unit. "That was a good move," said Grace. "Our OB/GYN program has experienced a 10 percent growth each year. In 2008, we celebrated the first year with more than 2,000 births."

 

Also in 2001, outpatient services expanded with the completion of a new outpatient diagnostic department. In 2002, Baptist DeSoto renovated an attached physician office building to house administrative employees. In 2003, Baptist DeSoto expanded the hospital pharmacy and added a new ICU family waiting room.

 

Three years passed before Baptist DeSoto celebrated its greatest expansion program. With a $175 million certificate of need (CON) approved in 2004, the hospital built an 11-story, 447,000-square-foot high-rise tower that opened in November 2006, adding 140 beds and bringing total bed capacity to 339. "We made all acute beds private," Grace emphasized.

 

Baptist DeSoto, which has no plans at this time to change its Level 4 trauma designation, also added a new emergency department with radiology components and two each trauma rooms.

 

"We're running into the same challenges as other hospitals, that emergency departments are overused and overcrowded," said Grace, "and the number of uninsured increases every day. Twenty-five percent of emergency room visitors, and 10 percent of hospital patients, have no financial ability to pay." (Baptist Healthcare Corporation contributes significantly to the DeSoto Health & Wellness Center in Southaven, which provides clinical healthcare services to the working uninsured.) 

 

Also part of the new tower opening: a new surgery floor with 11 surgery suites and post-anesthesia care unit (PACU).

 

"We're so fortunate to have longstanding surgeons and new ones recently recruited," said Grace. (In July, a Baptist DeSoto surgeon performed the hospital's first Lap Band surgery.) 

 

The tower project necessitated significant upgrades to the campus infrastructure, and resulted in a new 4-lane boulevard leading into the campus and doubling the size of the power plant, said Grace, noting the project expanded the building footprint on the 125-acre campus from 400,000 square feet to 900,000 square feet. 

 

"The (tower) expansion represented a very significant change to our campus and in our operations," said Grace. "It moved us from a small community hospital to a major player in the metro area."

 

Traffic flow also improved when Interstate 55 was expanded to eight lanes, city officials improved Church Road, and the hospital redirected patients to a primary entrance. "Most of our patients come on campus from the south," said Grace, a New Albany resident who commutes to Southaven daily. "Intersections were congested before those improvements were made." 

 

Wrapping up the tower project in 2007, Baptist-DeSoto expanded and upgraded outpatient services, ambulatory surgery, respiratory services, catheterization labs, cardiac rehabilitation, nuclear medicine, radiology services, a morgue, physician lounge, risk management and administration.

 

"Last year, we added a new mobility garden and a new staff development department," said Grace. "Earlier this year, we opened a sleep disorders center, and completed installation of a wireless network to support implementing various wireless software functions, including wireless telemetry, internal wireless phones and electronic medical records."

 

Baptist DeSoto's new partnership with the T.K. Martin Center for Center for Technology and Disability represents a small part of the picture of the hospital's rehabilitation program, but also an important part of the overall picture at Baptist DeSoto, said Grace, noting the rehabilitation bed census has doubled in the last year.

 

With cardiovascular accounting for 42 percent of outpatient procedures, and 34 percent of inpatient procedures, Baptist DeSoto leaders are exploring ways to add another cath lab within a year, Grace said, "Just as we're looking to expand our neurosurgery program next."