A new place to heal in the Springs

St. Francis Medical Center, opening in six months as Colorado Springs’ newest hospital, combines the past and the future of medicine, construction manager Bob Husband said Wednesday during a media tour.

Artwork, architectural elements and naming recognition at the new hospital will preserve the history of two congregations of Catholic nuns who forged health care services in Colorado Springs and merged their operations in 1990 into Penrose-St. Francis Health Services, he said.

The health care system now is a member of Centura Health, a joint effort of Catholic Health Initiatives and Porter Care Adventist Health System.

Located on 45 acres at the southeast corner of Powers Boulevard and Woodmen Road, the 350,000-square-foot, cross-shaped hospital incorporates a contemporary, homelike design, systems for patient and staff security and state-ofthe-art equipment.

The $207 million building is 85 percent complete, Husband said, and will open for business sometime after an Aug. 8 gala. It will feature five patient floors, a garden level with a dining room and a top shell for future development. Two medical office buildings, Sisters Grove Pavilion and North Care Pavilion, are also under construction on the campus.

Nearly 800 employees will begin training and moving into the building April 1, Husband said.

All services from the existing Penrose Community Hospital at 3205 N. Academy Blvd. will move to the new hospital. A chief administrative officer for the new hospital, Nathan “Nate” Olson, begins his job today to help with the transition.

The new, 158-bed hospital will admit about 7,000 patients and 50,000 outpatients in its first full year of operation, said Rick O’Connell, chief executive officer for Penrose-St. Francis Health Services. He expects it to initially bring in $260 million in annual gross revenue.

This will be the third new hospital in the region, behind Memorial Hospital North, which opened in April, and Pikes Peak Regional Hospital, which opened in October near Woodland Park.

St. Francis will have a birth center with 25 neonatal intensive care unit beds, an emergency department with three trauma areas and an intensive care unit, and headquarters for Flight for Life.

Several prominent features link to the past. The cornerstone from the city’s first hospital, St. Francis at 825 E. Pikes Peak Ave., and a stone sign now rest in a meditation fountain on the first floor near the two-story St. Clare Chapel.

A Madonna and child statue from Penrose Community Hospital will grace the lobby of the new hospital’s birth center.

A 13-by-7-foot stained glass window, originally installed in the old St. Francis Hospital in 1903, will hang above a staircase. The piece was sold in 1960 when the chapel was demolished but last year made its way back to the health system.

Husband said a Westcliffe stained-glass collector had the window and advertised it for sale in a circular. A Penrose-St. Francis employee saw the ad and brought it to the attention of hospital executives, who purchased it.

“We’ve embraced the St. Francis group, the Penrose group and the community hospital and are bringing them all together at this new hospital,” Husband said.

About $1 million of new artwork has been commissioned for the building, said Mike Esch, an interior designer with Jean Sebben Associates, including a 25-foot steel sculpture depicting St. Francis of Assisi.

The hospital’s interior design and exterior landscaping are based on a prairie theme, Esch said, through the use of fieldstone, wall coverings with grass and leaf motifs, carpeting patterns and artwork, such as moving landscape panels.

“We wanted to make the space hospitable and as homelike as possible to provide people with a sense of security, and a feeling of welcome and comfort, and I think we succeeded,” he said.

Project architect Margaret Gilbert of RTA Inc. said windows that extend three stories help bring the surrounding prairie land and the mountain views inside.

“We used lots of glass because it’s very much part of a healing environment for people to see nature, and it reduces the stress of the staff,” she said.

Penrose-St. Francis employees offered design input, based on life-size mockups of rooms done in Styrofoam and cardboard, and Husband said many suggestions were used.

For example, he said, patient rooms have handles outside the doors of private bathrooms so patients can steady themselves after getting out of bed.

Also, heads of beds were positioned not flush against walls but into curvatures to make it easier for staff members to reach patients.

Numerous safety features are found throughout the building — stairways and elevators in the third-floor birth center have an infant-protection system that alerts staff if a baby is too far from its mother, for example.

Energy-saving systems also are in place, Gilbert said, including lights that automatically turn off when an area is not in use.

And of course there are contemporary comforts, such as 26-inch flat-screen TVs in patient rooms and family respite areas throughout the hospital.

CONTACT THE WRITER: 636-0235 or debbie.kelley@gazette.com

OTHER NEW HOSPITALS

Memorial Hospital North

Opened: April 25 in Briargate

Beds: 99

Employees: 333 at opening May-December

2007 stats:

- Deliveries: 1,217

- Surgeries: 2,887

- Emergency visits: 17,458

- Radiology procedures: 20,703

- Lab procedures: 92,295

- Total procedures/visits: 134,560

Pikes Peak Regional Hospital

Opened: Oct. 1 near Woodland Park

Beds: 15

Employees: 136

October-December 2007 stats:

- Emergency visits: 1,387

- Surgeries: 69

- Outpatient treatments: 876

- Daily average inpatient count: 9.11

ST. FRANCIS MEDICAL CENTER

- Square footage: 350,000

- Beds: 158

- Construction: 24 months

- Opening: August

- Construction workers on site last summer: 750

- Construction workers on site the week of Jan. 8: 400

- Workers this week: 210

- Soil moved: 262,915 cubic yards

- Concrete: 16,005 cubic yards

- Structural steel: 4.8 million pounds

- Sheet metal: 700,000 pounds

- Doors: 1,150

- Plumbing fixtures: 1,100

- Medical gas outlets: 1,400

- Fire sprinkler heads: 4,000

- Sprinkler pipe: 9.5 miles

- Electrical conduit: 100 miles

- Copper wire: 650 miles

- Light fixtures: 4,500