PORT TOWNSEND — Jefferson Healthcare has gained occupancy to its new 56,000-square-foot building, most of the paint is dry, and the first patients will be seen Sept. 2.
“August is all-hands-on-deck,” Chief Operations Officer Jacob Davidson said. “Moving the dietary team — the kitchen — up, moving clinics, adding clinics, starting radiation oncology, pulmonology, our facilities team getting things ready and Abbot, our general contractor, trying to finish things up.”
On Aug. 24, a ribbon cutting and tours of the new hospital wing will start at 2 p.m. at 834 Sheridan St. in Port Townsend.
The city of Port Townsend and the Department of Health have already signed off on the building, Davidson said.
Technically, the campus has tied four buildings together, Davidson said.
“We now have four entrances. (The new building’s entrance) will be called Castle View,” Davidson said.
Utilities, cabinetry and trim are all complete. On Thursday, piles of cardboard boxes holding furniture were stacked above head height.
“It’s a lot of furniture,” Davidson said. “It’s about four weeks of installs.”
The two-story building is expanding and adding a number of services to the healthcare provider.
On the first floor, Jefferson Healthcare (JHC) has added two operating rooms for quick surgeries and capacity for a shell room that could be made into a third. A second shell room could become a fourth operating room or a sterile processing room.
JHC will maintain the three existing operating rooms, already on campus.
“(The operating rooms are) all brand new, all state-of-the-art equipment,” Davidson said. “Our surgeons are all really, really excited. Of course, they all want to practice here. ”
The hospital is adding more surgeons as well as anesthesiologists, nurses and scrub techs.
On the north side of the first floor is radiation oncology with its newly installed linear accelerator.
“It’s a rarity for a critical access hospital to have one of these,” Davidson said. “We are beyond thrilled.”
Dr. Sabrina Prime was hired as the radiation oncologist to run the department.
Up until this point, JHC has offered chemotherapy but not radiation.
“That means half of our cancer patients have to drive an hour in either direction for a 15-minute procedure during the worst part of their life,” Davidson said.
It is common that radiation treatment will be given to patients five days a week. Davidson said the difficulty of pursuing remote treatment on a daily basis has led some patients to forego treatment.
“It’s not even bringing care closer to home,” he said. “It’s folks being willing to get care now that it’s here.”
Also on the north side of the first floor is a new magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machine and the obstetrics and gynecology department.
The second floor is made up of specialty clinic space, new and expanded. The waiting room services 40 exam rooms, Davidson said.
The first few hallways beyond the waiting room are for dermatology, allowing the existing department to grow.
Dermatology is a big focus for hiring, Davidson said. JHC recently hired a dermatologist and is looking to hire a physician’s assistant for the department, he added.
Dermatology will grow from six rooms to 15, when the department moves into the new building. Their move will make space for medical oncology, Davidson said.
In the exam rooms, computers are already installed.
“Over 100 computers that we’re slowly working on wiring in, getting them up and operational, hooking them up to printers,” Davidson said.
New services pulmonology and ENT — ear, nose and throat — also are housed on the second floor.
An offer is being put together for an ENT doctor and Dr. Kevin Chong, currently at Olympic Medical Center in Port Angeles, will begin as JHC’s pulmonologist in two weeks.
“We have an offer out to another urologist, who will do surgeries as well,” Davidson said. “We’re hoping to find out this week.”
JHC had an ENT provider who backed out, but it will be making an offer on another soon, Davidson said.
Also upstairs will be JHC’s wound and neurology departments, moved over from the main building.
Twenty-five percent of the second floor is yet to be spoken for, Davidson said. JHC is always looking at other new service lines that the community doesn’t currently have, he said.
“Yeah, I got room upstairs, but in two years, am I going to have room upstairs?” Davidson asked.
Moving departments around can provide room to expand other services for some time, but then other needs may arise.
“It’s really musical chairs and trying to predict the future of both revenue and where patient needs are,” he said. “It’s kind of crazy.”
On the east side of the second floor, provider offices have windows overlooking Port Townsend Bay.
The staff break room has floor-to-ceiling windows, also overlooking the bay.
“Talk about an amazing spot to relax,” Davidson said.
The Garden Row Cafe will start providing food for patients on Aug. 22. The goal is to provide food options for staff from the kitchen on Aug. 28. On Sept. 8, the kitchen will open to the public.
“We talked about the linear accelerator. (The Garden Row Cafe) is our other Taj Mahal,” Davidson said.
The cafe will serve hot meals. It also will have a salad bar, coffee and pre-made food options.
Staff expect cafe visitation to skyrocket when it reopens.
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Reporter Elijah Sussman can be reached by email at elijah.sussman@sequimgazette.com.
Jefferson Healthcare Chief Operations Officer Jacob Davidson points out newly installed features from through the floor-to-ceiling staff lounge windows on the second floor of the hospital’s new wing: About 125 new parking spaces, a water chilling system, a generator — required to run 96 hours — and a new propane tank. (Elijah Sussman/Peninsula Daily News)
