Tower lobby to undergo renovations

NEW SMYRNA BEACH, Fla., July 5, 2017 In late summer, Florida Hospital New Smyrna will begin renovations to the tower entrance and inpatient lobby. While the renovations themselves will only take a few days and will create a minimal disruption to traffic flow, their completion will have a significant impact on the patient care experience. The current administration offices will be relocated, and in their place, the 112-bed New Smyrna Beach hospital will create a patient discharge lounge This will help us improve the patient flow throughout the entire process. As it is now, we often experience delays in our ER. You may ask yourself, how can a discharge lobby help with patients needing emergency care? Well, the answer is, quite a lot, actually. You see, the emergency department is often the front door for our patients, said Ken Mattison, Florida Hospital New Smyrna CEO. When there is a delay in the discharge process, patients stay in their inpatient room, even if the care process is complete and they are just awaiting transportation or discharge orders. If we have a high patient census and a full house of patients, which we often do, this can cause a delay in the ER because we don't have any rooms available for patients who have been stabilized in the emergency department and need to be admitted, so these patients end up waiting in the ER and taking up a room that could be used to care for other patients in the ER. After the renovations are completed, discharged patients will move to the medically-supervised lounge, designed similarly to a medical oncology treatment area, with an open feel and comfortable recliners. These renovations will soon be extended to the patient floors, modernizing the aesthetics with consistent, updated flooring. In addition, the renovations to the lobby will also involve creating a dedicated chapel for spiritual reflection. This comes on the heels of renovations to Florida Hospital New Smyrna's Schildecker lobby, which is the main entrance for visitors and patients. In June, the hospital completely transformed the appearance of the lobby and replaced the carpet, repainted the walls, and reupholstered the furniture. Altogether, these renovations are a nearly $500,000 investment in the hospital. This is in addition to the nearly $6.8 million Florida Hospital invested in updating the New Smyrna Beach facility's technology infrastructure and upgrading medical equipment to interface with the electronic medical records (EMR) technology. About Florida Hospital New Smyrna Florida Hospital New Smyrna is a member of Adventist Health System, a faith-based health care organization with 45 hospital campuses and 8,200 licensed beds in nine states, serving more than 5 million patients annually. With a mission to extend the healing ministry of Christ, Florida Hospital New Smyrna has 112-beds and is one of the seven Florida Hospitals in Flagler, Lake and Volusia counties that composes the Florida Hospital Central Florida Division - North Region. As the largest hospital system in the area, the Florida Hospital Central Florida Division - North Region has 1,226 beds and more than 7,800 employees.