Over the past two years, FirstHealth has enhanced its services for women and children by enlarging and refurbishing the facilities that house them and, in some cases, creating new spaces.

Labor/delivery and postpartum care
FirstHealth Moore Regional Hospital made room for a new labor and delivery triage (assignment of care) area. Now when a woman comes to the hospital to have her baby or because of a problem related to her pregnancy, she can bypass the Emergency Department and be taken to triage. There, a registered nurse assesses her condition and consults with a physician to determine what type of care she needs.

If the patient is in labor, she will be taken to a labor-delivery-recovery room. If she isn’t in labor, but her condition is such that she shouldn’t be sent home, she can stay in the triage area for observation. There are four curtained-off observation bays with comfortable beds. The triage area also has two outpatient rooms where patients can stay for up to 24 hours for observation.

“Labor and Delivery Triage has been a wonderful addition, because it enables us to give patients better service,” says Wanda Post, R.N., assistant director of Women & Children’s Services for Labor and Delivery, Postpartum and Gynecology at Moore Regional Hospital. “There used to be times on really busy days when patients would be sitting in wheelchairs because we didn’t have any place to put them. Now we have a place we can take them to be assessed and immediately start getting whatever treatment they need.”

Moore Regional has six rooms for labor, delivery and recovery. One by one over the past few months, the rooms have been getting a facelift—new paint, wallpaper and furnishings.

Following delivery and recovery, mother and baby are taken to a postpartum room, where the same nurses care for both of them.

“We also have a C-section room right next to Labor and Delivery,” says Cindy McDonald, the hospital’s chief operating officer and chief nursing officer. “The operating room staff provides care during the C-section, but our Labor and Delivery staff is right there, so the transition is very smooth.”

Thousands of babies
About 1,600 babies are born each year at Moore Regional; about 500 at Richmond Memorial.

Parviz Khosh-Nevis, M.D., one of four obstetrician/gynecologists on the medical staff at Richmond Memorial, has delivered more than 5,000 babies in his 22 years of practice in Rockingham.

“In the beginning, the hospital had a very small Labor and Delivery unit that was not really suitable for modern techniques of delivering babies,” he says. “The new unit that was built a few years ago is very nice and well-equipped, with monitors in each room and central monitoring. The nurses there are knowledgeable and well trained.”

Richmond Memorial has ultrasound equipment that provides amazingly clear, detailed images of a fetus in the mother’s womb. This helps physicians make sure there are no serious physical abnormalities, and parents can see what their child looks like before it is born. The ultrasound images can be transferred to a DVD for parents to keep.

Newborn intensive care
For babies born prematurely and others with medical problems requiring close
monitoring or special treatment, Moore Regional has the Clarke Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). The renovated 16-bed NICU that opened two years ago is much larger and better designed than the unit it replaced. The staff has plenty of room in which to work, and that enhances efficiency and good patient care. (See related story Welcome to the Clarke NICU)

Parents and others who come to visit the babies have more room and much more privacy. And, most importantly, the unit’s single, double and triple rooms mean the babies aren’t all crowded together.

“That’s a lot better for them developmentally, because it’s quieter,” says Beth Michelow, R.N., assistant director of Women & Children’s Services for the NICU and Pediatrics.

With the design of the new NICU, Michelow says, the focus was on making it family centered and developmentally appropriate. For example, babies who are very young or sick do better in an environment that is both quiet and dark, which is what they were used to in the womb. For those babies, a system of electric shades allows light from the windows to be screened or blocked out altogether. Older, healthier babies can have the shades open all the way.

“We have a lot of windows, which is important, because babies need to have natural sunlight and the day-night cycles,” Michelow says.

Next to the NICU are two rooms where parents can stay for a night or two with their baby before taking him or her home for the first time.

“A lot of times, parents haven’t had much opportunity to really take care of their baby, even though they may have visited several times a day,” Michelow says. “Staying here lets them get comfortable with the baby, and the staff can offer advice or answer any questions.”

Pediatrics
The Meyer Pediatric Unit at Moore Regional has eight single-bed rooms for patients up to age 18.
Richmond Memorial Hospital can comfortably accommodate 11 pediatric inpatients and can, if needed, care for as many as 14 at one time. The entire Pediatrics Unit was recently redecorated with bright, bold colors.

The most common reasons that children and teens are admitted to the hospital are respiratory infections, stomach viruses, newly diagnosed diabetes, asthma and orthopaedic surgery. Tonsillectomies are usually outpatient procedures, but occasionally a young patient needs to be admitted to the hospital. The number of pediatric inpatients typically increases during the winter flu season.

The newly renovated Pediatrics Unit at Moore Regional includes a treatment room where patients can be taken if they need to have something done that is likely to hurt, such as a needle stick to draw blood or the insertion of an IV line.

“We try not to do those kinds of things in their own room, because we want them to feel that their room is a safe place where they aren’t going to be hurt,” Michelow says. “The ceiling of the treatment room is decorated with colorful fish so the patients have something to focus on while they are having a procedure done.”

Both Moore Regional and Richmond Memorial have a playroom, with toys, games and books, for young patients who are able to get out of bed and leave their room.

Women’s surgery
Both hospitals also have inpatient units for gynecologic surgery patients. The recent renovation of
facilities for women and children at Moore Regional included the addition of three outpatient rooms to the GYN surgery unit.

“This gives the patient a place to stay without taking up an inpatient bed if she has come in for an outpatient procedure but isn’t ready to go home after the usual recovery period,” Post says. “It’s especially good for patients who are having trouble with pain management following surgery.”

The quality of health care services is influenced, at least to some extent, by the quality of the facilities that house them. For that reason, FirstHealth is committed to providing spacious, attractive, well-equipped spaces for all of its services, including those for women and children, says Charles Frock, chief executive officer of FirstHealth.

“We are very proud of the scope and quality of our women and children’s programs,” he says, “and we intend to continue looking for ways to strengthen them even more.”

Imaging just for women Scott Hees, D.O., reads an image in the Women’s Imaging Center at FirstHealth Richmond Memorial Hospital. It’s such a joy to see the smile on a patient’s face when we say everything looks OK,” says John Stevenson, M.D., medical director of the Women’s Imaging Center at FirstHealth Richmond Memorial Hospital. Now, Dr. Stevenson and fellow radiologist Scott Hees, D.O., are able to share the good news a lot faster with women whose mammograms show no signs of breast cancer. Just as importantly—and perhaps more so—they can immediately let a woman know if her mammogram shows a possible problem. “I think women really appreciate not having to wait to find out the result,” Dr. Stevenson says. “We talk to them and give them an answer while they are still here.” It used to take a month to six weeks for a woman with breast cancer to go through all the diagnostic steps and for treatment to begin. That is still the norm at many hospitals, where patients sometimes have to wait a week or two between each procedure. Dr. Stevenson, Dr. Hees and the staff at Richmond Memorial have streamlined the process so that women no longer have to endure a month or more of waiting, wondering and worrying. “If they come in for their screening and we find something we need to look at more closely, we can have them come back in two or three days and, sometimes, the very next day,” Dr. Stevenson says. “We leave openings in the schedule every day for diagnostic mammograms.” If the diagnostic mammogram shows a mass in the breast that might be cancerous, a biopsy can usually be done in a matter of days. Then, if the biopsy reveals cancer, treatment can begin almost immediately. Richmond Memorial has some of the most advanced tools for diagnosing breast cancer. A CAD (computer assisted diagnostic) system can detect suspicious patterns in clusters of tiny abnormalities in breast tissue. The hospital also offers both traditional and stereotactic breast biopsies. The stereotactic procedure, which is appropriate only for certain patients, is minimally invasive. Special imaging equipment precisely pinpoints the location of a suspicious mass in the breast so that only a tiny needle is required to extract a tissue sample for analysis. Sentinel node and ultrasound-guided breast biopsies are also available. The Women’s Imaging Center offers all of the diagnostic imaging services that are used exclusively or primarily for women—mammography, ultrasound and bone density testing for osteoporosis. Its state-of the-art ultrasound equipment has a variety of uses including fetal imaging and the diagnosis of gynecological and breast tumors. “Ultrasound is the most operator-dependent methodology there is,” says Director of Diagnostic Services John Tucker. “It is both an art and a science, and our ultrasound people are extremely good at it.” Although more and more men are developing osteoporosis, which is the loss of bone density, it is still predominantly a disease of older women. Bone density testing can indicate whether someone is at high risk of breaking a hip or wrist if she, or he, falls. Because osteoporosis isn’t something that develops overnight, Tucker says, “We need to be testing women in their 30s, 40s and 50s so that those who are at high risk can make the lifestyle changes to prevent this process. There is a huge number of people out there who could benefit from bone density testing.”