LANGLEY AIR FORCE BASE, Va. –
Not a week goes by without hearing the question, "When will the hospital be finished?" I smile to myself and reply, "It depends." While I know most people are referring to the beautiful new building next to the hospital, it gives me an opportunity to share with them that there is a lot more being built than what meets the eye.
The buildings are the most obvious sign of development and change. The new hospital addition is nearing completion and will house the inpatient wards, the operating rooms, the labor and delivery ward and four of the larger outpatient clinics. Family medicine, pediatrics and women's health clinics moved in to the first-floor addition this past January, and plans are currently being laid to move into the upper floors next month. This will nearly double the size of the inpatient and surgical space for the hospital and reclassify it as a 65-bed hospital.
Almost immediately after this move, a two-year renovation project will begin on the older side of the hospital to upgrade its design, expand much needed areas such as the laboratory, radiology and pharmacy and make room for many of the functions currently located in outlying buildings, such as physical therapy and flight medicine. Simultaneously, the dental clinic will undergo a complete renovation as well.
With all the construction comes an opportunity to bring new services and capabilities to the community. Paramedic services were recently added to the urgent care center, but this is just the start to many more planned capabilities. With the move into the inpatient floors of the addition, the hospital will open five state-of-the art operating rooms, a six-bed intensive care unit (ICU), a seven-bed neonatal care unit (NICU), and 14 beautiful labor-delivery-recovery-postpartum (LDRP) rooms, where families will be able to stay in the same room for the duration of the birth of their child and their hospital stay. The opening of the ICU will allow the change and reclassification of the Urgent Care Center into an emergency department. Plans are also being made to bring some new sub-specialty services to the hospital to fully optimize care within these new additions.
Along with the new facilities, we are also implementing new patient care models which will help improve teamwork, efficiency, safety and the patient experience. The first of these will be the Family Health Initiative, to be fully implemented by the end of this summer. It is a "patient-centered medical home" concept, which will focus on partnership and continuity with your family healthcare team. A novel design is also being incorporated into the renovation of surgical clinics which will streamline the doctor visits and any procedures that may need to be performed across the continuum of outpatient and inpatient care.
All of this is next-generation healthcare and is being offered to all ages. While Langley hospital will not have unlimited capacity, we are currently open for enrollment to all beneficiaries regardless of age or service affiliation. Additionally, we continue to be a referral hospital for many surgeries and hospitalizations free from any co-payments for all entitled to care regardless of where their primary enrollment resides.
Providing next-generation healthcare is more than a construction project -- it is a building process of the entire health care system. This is why the best answer to the question, "When will the hospital be finished?" will be, for a while at least, "It depends."