Busy, sometimes overwhelmed Providence St. Peter Hospital unveils 51 new patient beds
You could almost hear a collective sigh of relief on Monday as Providence St. Peter Hospital officials unveiled an important expansion: More patient beds, about half of which open Dec. 12, with more later this month.
A year-long $42 million project converted 18,500 square feet of administrative space into a 42-bed clinical decision unit that will be used to determine whether emergency room and other patients need to stay at the hospital or can be sent home.
Twenty-two of the 42 second-floor beds are set to open next week, followed by nine more on the first floor later this month.
Why not open them all at once? Because the hospital doesn’t have enough staff to do that just yet.
“We will open them progressively as we get more staff,” spokesman Chris Thomas said Monday.
The lack of staffing speaks to what every hospital has faced the last couple of years: Incredible patient demand driven by the pandemic, influenza, a respiratory virus and those who have returned to the hospital because they delayed their care during the pandemic.
“We have over 350 patients,” said Darin Goss, chief executive of Providence Swedish South Puget Sound. “And that is over capacity.”
He said the 51 total beds represents a big improvement for staff and patients, many of whom have experienced being “boarded” in a hallway while they waited for an in-patient bed to become available.
“No one expects to come into a hospital and be in a hallway,” Goss said.
Growth is another factor that has contributed to patient demand as Thurston County’s population has reached 300,000 people.
“The community keeps growing and we need to respond to it,” Goss said.
At its busiest, Providence had to turn away patients from other regional hospitals. But with the opening of the new beds, Goss is hoping they can start saying “yes” to those other medical centers.
The staff of the new clinical decision unit also is anxious to get to work in the space, said Elle Mortensen, director of surgical services.
Nurses and others provided input on paint colors, nurses stations and spacing, she said.
“The staff really deserves this kind of a change because they have carried a lot of the heavy weight of COVID,” Mortensen said. “They are a highly deserving group of this new unit.”
