Carilion Clinic is changing services at its Community and Roanoke Memorial hospitals
By Christina Rogers
The Roanoke Times (Virginia)
Copyright 2007 The Roanoke Times
ROANOKE, Va. — Expectant mothers can no longer expect to have their babies at Carilion Roanoke Community Hospital.
Relocation of patients and inpatient services, including expectant mothers and newborns in intensive care, from Roanoke Community Hospital to Carilion’s newly expanded Roanoke Memorial Hospital began Tuesday morning.
The move, which is expected to be completed Friday, caps a nearly four-year, $105 million plan to meld the offerings of the two hospitals under one roof.
It took 11 ambulances and more than 50 trips to transfer about 76 patients from the hospital’s maternity areas and neonatal intensive care unit, said Carilion Clinic spokesman Eric Earnhart.
Another 30 patients are expected to make the trip Thursday, he added, when Carilion moves its pediatric units.
The medical migration began about 8 a.m. with a row of boxy, white ambulances lined up in front of the emergency department at Community Hospital. No streets were closed and the transfer was done incrementally, with one or two ambulances making the trip at a time.
The relocation will also mean a shuffling of services for patients.
Roanoke Memorial, for instance, will treat all new obstetric, gynecologic and neonatal patients. Those services will be closed at Community Hospital.
Starting Thursday at 10 p.m., Community Hospital will no longer operate a 24-hour emergency room.
In its place, an urgent care center will debut Friday morning for treatment of minor injuries and ailments without appointments. That service will be open daily from 7:30 a.m. to 10 p.m.
Last year, Community Hospital saw 55,000 patients at its emergency department.
Now, all patients with emergency conditions such as head trauma or heart attack symptoms will be treated at Roanoke Memorial, which has expanded its emergency department.
All told, the move will add 137 beds to Roanoke Memorial, including the 60 in the neonatal intensive care unit, bringing the hospital’s total bed count to 825 and making it the third-largest in the state.
For now, the name hanging outside Community Hospital will not change, Earnhart said. But the hospital building, which opened downtown in 1967, will become the new home of Jefferson College of Health Sciences and other medical training programs.
The eighth floor was converted last year into dormitories, and renovations on the remaining levels are scheduled to begin this fall. Jefferson College’s enrollment topped 1,000 last year.
Plans for consolidating the two hospitals first emerged in 2003. Carilion officials said then that the move would help eliminate duplicate services and save Carilion an estimated $5 million a year. To absorb the additional services, Roanoke Memorial was expanded by about 300,000 square feet. A five-story addition was also added to the south tower.
Earnhart said no jobs were lost in the relocation of services, and that some inpatient services at Community Hospital, a 10-story building on Elm Avenue, may return in the future.
A request by Carilion to move 40 inpatient rehabilitation beds to the hospital’s seventh floor is awaiting a decision from a state regulatory agency. The floor currently houses medical-surgical beds.
Community Hospital will also continue to house some outpatient services such as endoscopy and a wound care center.
The two hospitals have long operated under the Carilion banner, the result of a 1990 merger between the two medical institutions. Carilion Clinic is currently the valley’s largest employer with about 10,000 workers in 2006.