The University of New Mexico Hospital opened its new Critical Care Tower in October, with the hopes of addressing several long-standing health care challenges ranging from capacity to recruitment of health care workers. A UNM spokesperson said the hospital is already seeing a positive impact with less overcrowding.
The tower now houses a new adult emergency department with its own ambulance bay and helipad.
Spokesperson Chris Ramirez said in the past, those patients who weren’t necessarily trauma patients would sometimes receive care in the hallways of the emergency room.
“What we have created by intentional design here are rooms just to treat and take care of those patients who aren’t quite critical but they’re sick enough to be in the emergency room,” said Ramirez.
Its vertical structure allows for the flow of care to be stacked starting from the emergency room, to the surgical suite, and then intensive care units with the hopes of delivering quick patient care.
“The ICUs are directly above the operating rooms just that we can minimize the transport for patients,” Ramirez explained.
The building will also have a new surgical suite of 18 new operating rooms, and adult ICUs caring for patients with neurological or cardiothoracic trauma, and other acute medical conditions, amounting to 96 beds out of the total of 192 beds overall.
There will also be radiology services placed throughout the tower doubling the amount of CTs, scanners, and MRIs.
Ramirez said, before this expansion the hospital was operating anywhere from 110-150% capacity and as New Mexico’s only Level 1 trauma center creating space was crucial.
“All the complex patients around the state are going to come to us,” said Ramirez. “And we have to make sure that we have the teams, the technology, the space, and the ability to care for New Mexico’s sickest patients, most complex patients or most hurt patients”.
The nine-story building comes at a cost of $842 million dollars but Ramirez said the purpose of the building is taking effect as the hospital has hired 1,000 new employees ranging from housekeeping, to maintenance to all levels of health care workers and the hospital is starting to see operating numbers come down.
“To finally have numbers in the 90s tells me that we have the space now to meet New Mexico’s health care challenges,” Ramirez said.
The CCT also houses what’s called the Sky Campus on its fourth floor. This is a place just for health care workers. There are training rooms and conference rooms for residents and fellows to do the education for their graduate programs.
“We have actual dedicated spaces that promote learning, promote education. Learners can come in and do whatever that they need to do,” Ramirez said.
Also, the campus has on-call rooms and lockers for residents that Ramirez said is new for the hospital but officials hope it will promote employee wellness.
“When we were designing the hospital, we wanted a space that would help minimize physician burnout,” Ramirez explained. “And so while they have some downtime, they have a dedicated space where they can come get away from the hustle and bustle of a hospital and then just get the rest that they need so that they can come back when they’re needed.”
Ramirez said this type of investment makes the hospital a more attractive place to recruit health care professionals.
“Because we have opened up so much more clinical space, we have more footprint to provide patient care, we now have an ability to expand our educational programs to bring in a bigger MD class or more nurses because we now have space for them to do their clinical training in the hospital,” said Ramirez.
The tower’s emergency department serves adults only. Pediatric emergency care is still in the main pavilion building.
Support for this coverage comes from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.
