Morphing Medicine

St. Vincent Medical Center Evolves with the Times

By Neal Singer

More than a decade ago, designers embarked on a new master plan with St. Vincent Regional Medical Center to renovate and expand the Santa Fe hospital. Crews are currently working on upgrading the surgery department and emergency room.

St. Vincent’s new emergency department’s entryway was renovated as part of a larger $12 million emergency room renovation and addition. Images courtesy The Hartman + Majewski Design Group

St. Vincent Regional Medical Center in Santa Fe, founded in 1865 by the Sisters of Charity, is now the largest regional trauma center in northern New Mexico.

Keeping up with the region’s growing population requires considerable construction and the capability to house new technologies, says architect Jeff Zellner of Albuquerque-based Hartman and Majewski Design Group.

The architectural firm was enlisted by St. Vincent “to do programming loads over the next 20 years and size the hospital accordingly,” Zellner says. “With the new services that St. Vincent wants to bring online, like cardiac care, there’s been a lot of building, particularly over the past five years.”

Most recently under construction are a $9 million surgery department upgrade led by general contractor Klinger Construction LLC of Albuquerque and a $12 million emergency room renovation and addition led by Alabama-headquartered general contractor Robins & Morton.

The surgery project is scheduled for completion in October. The emergency renovation and steel-framed addition was completed in several stages so as to keep emergency facilities in continuous operation, with the final phase wrapping up earlier this year.

Installation of the latest high-tech medical equipment in the surgery department requires wiring and mechanical upgrades to cope with greater power and cooling needs.

“We put in a special laminar-flow air system in each surgical suite that can drop temperatures quickly,” says Tak Ledbetter, project manager for Albuquerque-based Yearout Mechanical Inc. The rapid cooling capability is important to slow down biological functioning during open-heart surgery.

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“We also installed elaborate headwalls with medical stations for med-gas units,” Ledbetter adds.

Precision laminar air-flow systems, from the Johnston Co. in Albuquerque, “are like laboratory ‘clean rooms’ specialized for operating rooms,” says owner Bryan Johnston.

“Five doctors may want their surgery rooms arranged five different ways,” he says. “Our product - from Precision Air Products in Minneapolis - lays out a system that fits over each operating table and provides a given, controllable amount of air from chilled and hot water coils.”

Surgery room floors are now empty of power cables and hoses because large booms have been installed to raise them off the floor.

“All the surgery supersuites need more power to support the new equipment,” Zellner says.

In addition to air-flow systems that can drop room temperature 20 degrees in five minutes, there are monitors that can aid surgeons by showing videos in the operating room of procedures done months earlier on the same patient - while the current operation is ongoing.

Ray Smith, co-president of Klinger, says the surgery department project “fits the scope of what we’ve done for Presbyterian Hospital in Albuquerque.”

Before starting the 15-month, 10,000-sq-ft upgrade and 22,000-sq-ft stucco-skinned addition to the hospital’s emergency department that included two large trauma rooms and two cardiac resuscitation rooms, “We had to relocate prairie dogs,” says Glenn Myers, operations manager for Robins & Morton on the $12 million project. With a slight drawl, he says, “We don’t have prairie dogs in Tennessee.”

Santa Fe’s enlightened citizenry is possibly the state’s largest relocator of the small mammals.

But the city’s building inspectors are reportedly more difficult to make appointments with than Albuquerque inspectors.

Then there is the emergency facility nurses’ station.

“It’s the largest nursing station I’ve ever seen,” Myers says. “It looked to me like you could play football in it.”

Zellner agrees. “The nursing station is kind of different,” he says.

The approximately 200-ft-long, 25- to 14-ft-wide nurses’ work area is where paperwork is done. It also serves as a rapid-response station. A wall of glass allows nurses to see into treatment rooms across from them where emergency work is ongoing.

“Nothing substitutes for visual observation,” says Zellner. “Someone screaming, waving their hands, turning red - all are visible from the nursing station. There’s no obstruction of views across the entire area.”

The station also operates modularly “You can shut down part and then scale back up,” Zellner adds.

Key Players

Owner: St. Vincent Regional Medical Center
Architect: The Hartman + Majewski Design Group
General Contractor: Robins & Morton; Klinger Constructors
Subcontractors (Emergency Room): Yearout Mechanical; DKD Electric; Structural Services; Pikes Peak Steel; TLC Plumbing & Utilities; All American Enterprises; Desert Drywall

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