River Region offers glimpse of future
Published 12:00 am Thursday, October 18, 2001
Construction continues inside the atrium of River Region Medical Center Wednesday.(The Vicksburg Post/ MELANIE DUNCAN)
[10/18/01]Walking into the large foyer of River Region Medical Center on U.S. 61 North with its skylight and fountain will be unlike what patients and visitors have seen at local hospitals in the past.
But River Region Health System CEO Phillip A. Clendenin says spaciousness and decorations are not what it’s all about. It’s about providing better service, he said.
“It’s something,” is how Clendenin summarized the facility expected to be complete in February. “It’s easy to get excited about.”
Clendenin and Dr. Briggs Hopson, medical director and board member of River Region Medical Corp., led a limited tour Wednesday of the $112 million medical center for about 50 members of the local Economic Development Foundation. The tour included the nearly completed emergency room, intensive care unit and a maternity ward designed to “make it feel like home,” Clendenin said.
The wood floors in the patient rooms and the pink and blue walls of the nursery are just a couple of the visible changes in the third floor women’s wing. Other improvements include cabinets to hide medical equipment and built-in lights.
“It’s much more like being in a hotel room than in a hospital,” Clendenin said.
When construction began in January 2000, the hospital was to have 179 beds, but River Region’s parent company, Quorum, sold its Vicksburg holdings to Triad Hospitals Inc. Triad has decided to relocate a skilled nursing unit that has been at Vicksburg Medical Center to the new complex. It will change the configuration.
A design feature of the facility, Clendenin also said, is that it can be expanded easily. The contractor was asked to add an additional three floors to the south wing of the hospital to house the skilled nursing unit.
“Having it here means it will be much easier on the patients,” he said. “Instead of having to be transported they will stay right here.”
About 300 workers are putting the finishing touches on the inside of the 430,000-square-foot hospital to meet the completion date now three months ahead of schedule. When the move is complete, the new facility will replace Vicksburg Medical Center on North Frontage Road and ParkView on McAuley Drive.
The fate of both buildings is still uncertain, but hospital officials have said that the ParkView hospital is for sale. If no buyer can be found other options are to donate the hospital to a charity or tear it down.
Not all health-care entities will be leaving that area. The Marian Hill Chemical Dependency Center will continue to operate in the ParkView complex for at least another year and The Street Clinic and the Vicksburg Cancer Center will remain at their sites on Grove.