New children’s unit debuts at expanded Community North

March 2007

Community Hospital North takes another step toward completing its $170 million expansion Dec. 18, when it opens a bulked-up pediatric unit.

The Community Health Network hospital will unveil 22 private patient suites with several family-friendly features. The rooms will come with a separate sleeper sofa for parents, as well as a “parent time out” space that allows family to be in the room but out of sight from the patient.

The space gives a mother or father the chance to have a moment to themselves if they need it, said Sue Sandberg, a network vice president. That idea came from a parent who said she was scared by her child’s hospital stay and had no place to sit and cry while she was there.

The pediatric unit was designed with extensive input from patients and family.

“They were very, very creative in meeting the needs of a wide, diverse group of ages,” she said.

The hallways, for instance, feature themes involving treasure hunts or caves because children told hospital officials it was boring to walk down a typical hospital hallway while they recover.

The unit also includes two pediatric sleep labs and is near the emergency department, where up to 26 percent of the business is pediatrics, Sandberg said.

Community moved its pediatric beds from its East hospital to North in 2003. The expansion will nearly double the size of the current, 12-bed pediatric unit at North.

Sandberg said pediatrics offers one of the fastest-growing demographics for Community North thanks to nearby communities like Fishers. The hospital also will add some pediatric specialists to its staff, but it isn’t trying to compete with the specialized care offered by Clarian Health Partners’ Riley Hospital for Children.

Community has no plans to eventually start its own pediatric hospital like Riley or St. Vincent Children’s Hospital, Sandberg said.

The North expansion goes beyond pediatrics. It includes 48 private “deluxe medical-surgical suites” that will open in January and 60 new labor-and-delivery suites to debut in April, Sandberg said.

The project, which also involves converting semi-private rooms to private ones, will raise the hospital’s bed total from 304 to 476.

In addition to the room upgrades, Community plans to add a helicopter landing pad to its north campus to handle patient transfers, spokeswoman Sue Reimbold said. Helicopters currently land on a side road near the hospital.

The bulk of the expansion work will finish in April. Then the hospital will begin retrofitting existing rooms to make them private, Sandberg said.