Beatrice Hospital To Build New Addition

Beatrice Community Hospital officials will be breaking ground soon to start construction of a new medical office building.  B-C-H Senior Executive Eric Trusty says the $13.3 million facility will be attached to the north side of the hospital.

“So right now where our Women’s and Children’s clinic is which was our most recent addition, we will be on the north side of that…still connected to the hospital….and then have a nice connection that once you are in the building or in the clinic connect into he main part of the hospital. Whether you have further testing that has to be done such as lab, diagnostic imaging or anything along those lines you will be able to have that one campus, or one stop shop to be able to have that done”.

The new addition will be known as the “Beatrice Family and Internal Medicine” building and will be the home for all Beatrice primary care providers.

Trusty says "With this project we will be consolidating and bringing all the physician clinics into one. So with that, that means Gage County Family Medical clinic, Beatrice Medical Clinic on west court, and currently our Beatrice Family and Internal Medicine Clinic which is on the second floor of the hospital…they will all consolidate into one into the new addition”.

The new building will provide over 22-thousand square foot of space. While speaking on KWBE Radio's "To Your Health" program Wednesday morning, hospital C-E-O Rick Haraldson says the hospital board approved to move forward on constructing the new facility during their January meeting. Haraldson says he is excited about the quality of health care the new addition will provide the community.

“Healthcare has really evolved and we use terms like evidence based but there are certain ways you should treat patients whether they have diabetes, if they have high blood pressure or certain things. So with this move we are really pushing for quality outcomes and so it is much easier if we have everybody in the same area to have consistent processes, to have consistent ways to getting patients in and making sure they have those annual wellness checks and doing those things. And if you can do it under one roof it’s just more consistent.”

Trusty says the plan is to break ground as soon as weather permits. He says it is estimated it will take about a year to construct the new addition which will include curbside access and handicap accessibility entrances on both the east and west sides along with 80 additional patient parking stalls.

“We will have 36 different patient rooms for our providers and for our patients and it is setup in sort of a pod system so we will have three different pods of patient care areas. So it will be a little bit different. You won’t necessarily have your traditional waiting room per say. We have learned a lot during this pandemic on different things that we need to do. You know between social distancing and so forth, so as a patient when you check in you will be directed essentially down a corridor that does have some waiting but the goal is to get you back into a room and get you out of the clinic as soon as possible”.

In addition to consolidating all primary care providers, the Beatrice Orthopedics and Sports Medicine Clinic will be relocated from the second floor of the hospital to the main level nearer to the new medical office building.