Chris Cole, Field Engineer, MJ Harris; Jackie McGowan, Vice President of Facilities Management and Planning; Mickey Fender, Assistant Superintendent, MJ Harris.

New Emergency Department, Surgical Suites to Open Spring 2011

FLOWOOD—River Oaks Hospital in Flowood is expanding again, mirroring Rankin County's population spike by increasing emergency and surgical services. (See related story "Performing MAKOplasty" at the end of this article.)

In June, River Oaks began construction on an $8 million high-tech Emergency Department that will add 12,000 square feet of new private treatment rooms, specialty care rooms and emergency-specific imaging services to the new 145,000-square-foot tower that opened mid-2009. Specifically, the Emergency Room will be housed in 9,918 square feet; imaging services will absorb 2,086 square feet.

The new Emergency Department will be approximately three times larger than the 3,454-square-foot original space, and will have the capacity to treat twice as many patients. Accessible by Flowood Drive, it will be located on the south end of the hospital.

"We have to grow with this community," said River Oaks CEO Denny Bruns, FACHE, who joined Health Management Associates (NYSE: HMA), the Naples, Fla.-based parent company of River Oaks, in 2008. "Our hospital was one of the first major medical facilities located in the county just off Lakeland Drive and now, nearly 30 years later, we're again enlarging our footprint. Emergency care services are an important part of a community, and we're here to proactively provide the capacity to treat the people we serve."

The construction project resulted from River Oaks' $8.06 million certificate of need approved last June. The expanded Emergency Department is scheduled to open next spring.

"We'd already designated areas in the original design for the Vision project to include these services—the ORs and ED—and we've been very fortunate to put these new services into the new building instead of having to go into an existing OR and design space around staff and patient flow," said Jackie McGowan, vice president of facilities management and planning at River Oaks. "It's been one of the easier projects we've done here."

Originally scheduled to begin in the fourth quarter of 2005, the Vision project was postponed a year after Hurricane Katrina devastated South Mississippi. "Since then, we've been blessed that the weather hasn't caused delays to our projects," said McGowan. "We've been able to finish on schedule and on budget, and provide the services our doctors ultimately wanted to have in that building."

Also in the new tower, River Oaks is building three additional surgery suites, adding nearly 20,000 square feet of surgical space to the existing department. Each suite is twice as large as the hospital's average surgery rooms. Two of the three suites are being relocated from the existing surgery department; the existing ORs will then be converted to simple procedure rooms.

"As is true with most hospitals built in the 1980s or before, the ORs were small," said Bruns, noting that River Oaks opened in 1981. "Now with state-of-the-art technology, and especially robotic services, we needed bigger, more flexible surgery suites. River Oaks has already acquired a da Vinci surgical system used for hysterectomy, prostatectomy, bariatric surgery and general surgery."

The new multi-purpose ORs will feature the Laminar® air flow system, a more expensive yet cleaner air system, explained McGowan, that reduces the risk of infections. "When we get these finished," he said, "it'll give us four Laminar air flow rooms, which is significant for our market area."

Once the construction is completed next April, River Oaks will have 18 operating rooms that include two cesarean section rooms. Last year, 1,937 babies were born at River Oaks. Combined with its HMA sister facility, Woman's Hospital, 3,499 babies were born in 2009, outpacing the University of Mississippi Medical Center. When the new tower was finished last summer, a new NICU, nursery, postpartum unit, and medical/surgical unit were the first areas to open.

"We'll soon add 41 beds to the new tower at River Oaks, which we just got a CON approved for, and that'll bring us to 191 total beds," said Bruns, "Once we've completed that, we have other projects on our books. For example, some of our med/surg rooms need a little overhauling, and we'll invest in other areas of the hospital. We'll spread it out over a few years."

After the Vision project wraps, the size of the hospital staff is expected to increase from 800 to 1,200 at capacity, said Bruns.

Related Story

Performing MAKOplasty

Earlier this year, River Oaks Hospital in Flowood became the first in Mississippi to offer MAKOplasty, a new, minimally invasive partial knee resurfacing procedure used to treat early to mid-stage osteoarthritis of the knee.

Powered by the RIO Robotic Arm Interactive Orthopedic system, MAKOplasty has been proven to provide quicker rehabilitation , more natural knee motion post-surgery, and a smaller scar. The new tool for orthopedic surgeons potentially allows for greater accuracy when doing a partial knee replacement, which may lead to better, long-term results. MAKOplasty may be performed on the medial portion of the knee, the patellofemoral , or the lateral portion of the knee. It can also be performed as a bicompartmental procedure on both the medial and patellofemoral portions of the knee.

When performing MAKOplasty, surgeons at River Oaks Hospital utilize the RIO which features a tactile robotic arm and a 3-D virtual patient specific visualization system, which provides the surgeon a pre-surgical plan that details the technique for bone preparation and customized positioning using a CT scan of the patient's knee. During the procedure, the system creates a three-dimensional live-action, virtual view of the patient's bone surface and correlates the image to the pre-programmed surgical plan. As the surgeon uses the robotic arm, its tactile, acoustic and visual feedback limits the bone preparation to the diseased areas and provides for more optimal implant positioning and placement for each individual patient.

"River Oaks Hospital is proud to bring state of the art technology to Mississippi—and the southeast," said River Oaks CEO Denny Bruns, FACHE, noting the hospital is one of 29 nationwide to perform MAKOplasty, and was rated No. 1 in Mississippi for overall orthopedic services and joint replacement for 2010 by HealthGrades. "More importantly, we have skilled surgeons and staff members who operate the equipment and care for our patients with the utmost courtesy and respect. Our ratings prove it."

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