By Steve Spencer
In 1962, John Lanier, the Mayor of Bessemer, received a $1,000,000 grant for the funding of a hospital. The 115 bed facility, owned by the city of Bessemer, was completed in 1964 and named Memorial Hospital. The facility changed hands in the 1970s, renamed Bessemer Carraway Medical Center, before joining UAB in 2002 as UAB Medical West.
Additions to the hospital were built over the years, which created some inefficiencies with some similar services in different buildings, and less than ideal patient flow, as well as electronic capabilities unsuited to the digital age.
All that has been remedied with the brand-new, state-of-the-art facility that opens in August on a 46-acre site. The 200-bed hospital boasts a greatly expanded capacity at 400,000 square feet which is double the old facility’s 200,000 footprint. In addition, the medical office building is 150,000 square feet. The new hospital has 30 exam rooms in the Emergency Department, including two trauma rooms, compared with just 22 exam rooms at the original facility.
“Critical care diversion has been a problem at times in Birmingham,” said Keith Pennington. “We will be able to alleviate some of the issues with that with our increased in ICU beds, going from 21 at the old hospital to 38 here.”
The new hospital has 12 fully-equipped OR suites, along with two cath labs and three endoscopy suites. It continues all the services that the old hospital had, including geriatric psych, inpatient and outpatient rehab, and women’s services.
“We’ve tried to create a calming environment,” Pennington said. “We have wooded area with walking trails around it and a lake so visitors and employees can go outside to relax. We tried to bring nature inside as well. We have rock walls and wood walls, and fireplaces with rocking chairs. Each floor is represented by a flower native to Alabama, and the higher the plant or flower grows, the higher the floor. The colors in the floor are based on the color of that plant along with paintings of the plant by Alabama artists. For example, the women’s floor is represented by pink azaleas, and along with the paintings, the floor is highlighted in pink. The first floor is the lily pad floor so you see a lot of whites and greens.”
UAB Medical West will move into the new facility on a Saturday in early August. “We plan on doing it all in a day,” Pennington said. “We’ve been working with all the ambulance providers and with UAB, with the county, the fire department, and critical Care transport. We’ll have about 20 ambulances lined up. We’ve had a number of meetings, and we’re doing a mock move in July. We hope to have it all done in about four hours.
“We don’t know how many patients we’ll have on the day of the move. This week we’re running between 130 and 140 patients. There will be less on a Saturday because people won’t be doing elective procedures that day.
“Everybody is thrilled because it goes above and beyond what you think a hospital is going to look like.”
