Butler Hospital tower deadline in July a challenge
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Work on a new entrance road for Butler Memorial Hospital was finished this fall.
Its opening, however, will await the completion in July of a $124 million patient tower at the regional medical facility.
Meeting that deadline will be a challenge, according to Ken DeFurio, the president of Butler Health System. "But we believe we are going to make it," he told about two dozen people attending the institution's annual public meeting recently.
The health system, which operates Butler Memorial Hospital and two dozen satellite medical facilities, is nearing the end of a four-year $155 million expansion and upgrade.
The largest element in the project is the seven-story tower, under construction as part of an upgrade of Butler Memorial Hospital on East Brady Street. The hospital campus is on the Butler-Butler Township line.
The new road will provide direct access to the hospital via East Jefferson Street, also known as state Route 68.
"It's no longer just [an architectural] rendering," Mr. DeFurio said as an image of the patient tower appeared on a television screen he was using in his presentation. "If you drive past, this is what you'll see now."
The event, which also featured brief presentations from top financial and patient care executives, was held Dec. 3 in the health system's East Campus on Oneida Valley Road in Summit.
Although facing economic uncertainty in the wake of a national recession, the health system ended its financial year June 30 in the black, chief financial officer Anne Krebs said.
The nonprofit institution reported revenues of $206 million and expenses of $196 million, leaving $10 million to pay for future programs and technology, she said.
Despite the freeze in credit markets in September 2008, the health system was part of a "trickle" of borrowers able to sell bonds last fall, she said. The institution has borrowed $126 million that it will pay back over the next 30 years. The average interest rates on the mix of fixed- and variable-rate securities is between 6 percent and 6.5 percent, she said.
Dr. Tom McGill, vice president of quality and safety, described the hospital's efforts to meet national patient safety goals, reduce medication errors and cut infection and ulcer rates.
Butler Memorial is heading toward 100 percent compliance with 10 such measures, he said. They include hand washing, having nurses read back all verbal orders from doctors and confirming patient identities with two pieces of personal information.
Hospital admissions have continued to rise to 15,902 patients in the most recent year, an increase of 35 percent since 2001.
Emergency room visits have grown 20 percent during that same period to 41,619, equal to 114 patients per day. Surgeries have grown 54 percent to 18,595. Two-thirds of those procedures were done at Butler's $10 million Benbrook Medical Center, a satellite facility in Butler Township that opened in 2006.
Benbrook is one of 24 locations where the health system and its partners provide medical services.
Mr. DeFurio discussed the health system's plans for new satellite facilities scheduled to open in Saxonburg in 2010 and in Slippery Rock in 2011.
Both would offer outpatient services such as lab work and imaging services, including X-rays, CAT scans and cardiac tests.
Plans for Saxonburg also call for offering "urgent care" at that location for patients who need to be seen quickly but whose conditions are not serious enough for a visit to an emergency room.
The Saxonburg facility also will provide office space for cardiologists, podiatrists and orthopedic surgeons.
First Published December 10, 2009 12:00 am
