9/9/2009

Sts. Mary & Elizabeth Hospital Reopens Inpatient Operating Rooms

Hospital Now Back to a Full Service Healthcare Facility

(Louisville, KY)  Sts. Mary & Elizabeth Hospital (SMEH) is now back to being a full service health care facility with the reopening of its inpatient operating rooms on Tuesday, September 8.  Five operating suites were opened, with the first procedure being performed by Dr. Bryce Schuster, general surgeon, at 7:30 a.m. that day.

After flash flooding hit Louisville on August 4, SMEH moved nearly 200 patients to other local hospitals or health care facilities with the help of local emergency medical services. A number of patients were transferred to Jewish Hospital. Many of the SMEH physicians, nurses, and clinical staff worked on site at Jewish Hospital to care for the transferred patients and other patients from the south Louisville community.

SMEH reopened their outpatient surgery center on August 10, emergency department on August 12 and some inpatient beds on August 17. To date, they have 181 patient beds open. 

“Opening our inpatient surgical suites was the last part of being back to a full service hospital,” said Tom Gessel, president/CEO of SMEH.  It has been pretty amazing to see our team members, medical staff, contractors and vendors working around the clock to bring us back in just five weeks.”

"It’s wonderful to be back in the operating rooms at Sts. Mary and Elizabeth Hospital,” said Dr. Schuster. “The staff has done a fabulous job of getting the operating rooms back in working condition.”

“We have learned a lot from this experience and have grown closer as a team,” said Wanda Moore, RN, executive director Surgical Services. “We have performed disaster drills in the past, but never had to actually evacuate a hospital. It is great to be back home in our own operating rooms.”

Before reopening the inpatient surgery suites, SMEH inpatients reached as high as 130.  This number is expected to grow as higher-risk, inpatient surgical procedures are performed. The hospital has seen as many as 140 patients a day in the emergency department. SMEH provides services to south Louisville’s 177,000 residents and is the second busiest emergency department in Louisville.

Last year SMEH provided treatment for nearly 45,000 emergency department patients, over 12,000 inpatients and performed more than 10,200 surgeries.

“We still have a way to go for clean up,” said Gessel. “The record-breaking rain placed 16 feet of water in the hospital basement where the infrastructure was located.  It left the facility without an electrical system, communication lines for telephones and computers, air conditioning, and steam for hot water.  All the upper floors were not damaged.”

“The flood has provided us the opportunity to build a power plant to relocate our infrastructure somewhere besides the basement,” Gessel added. “But this will take time to build.  It could be as long as 12 months.”

The telephone number for community members to call for updates as they become available is 502-407-3069.  Information can be found by visiting jhsmh.org/smehupdates, as well as through our facebook page (facebook.com/jewishhospital) and twitter.com/jewishhospital. 

Photo and interview opportunities are available to the media.

ABOUT STS. MARY & ELIZABETH HOSPITAL
Sts. Mary & Elizabeth Hospital, is a 331-bed primary care hospital offering advanced treatment in cancer, cardiac care, lung disease, orthopaedics, vascular and general surgery and emergency services. Serving the south Louisville community for more than a century, Sts. Mary & Elizabeth Hospital has literally cared for generations of families in this community. And our network of care is more than 30 facilities strong. One-hundred thirty-five years, thousands of needs, millions of blessings. That is our history and the future.

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