Dixie Regional Medical Center celebrates expansion with multiple events
By Terri Draper
In June of 2016, Intermountain Dixie Regional Medical Center kicked off a major $300 million expansion and consolidation endeavor, the largest construction project in the history of Washington County. The expansion has more than doubled the size of the existing campus, bringing the total hospital space to more than 960,000 square feet.
Now that the construction is nearing completion, the hospital is planning a public grand opening event and tours for the community Sept. 12–15. The festivities are themed “Growing Together,” and celebrate of all of the clinical services on the 400 East campus reuniting with the services on the River Road campus so the hospital can grow together into the future.
The public is invited to enjoy opening night festivities from 7:30 to 8:30 p.m. Sept. 12. Opening night will be held in the new tiered east bowl parking lot on Medical Center Drive and is late-summer casual seating: please bring lawn chairs and/or blankets to sit on. There is no charge. In case of inclement weather, this event will be held in the DSU Burns Arena.
On Sept. 13 at 5 p.m. a ceremony will commemorate the two hospital campuses becoming one. Self-guided tours will be offered from 3 to 7 p.m. Sept. 13 and 14. The ceremony will take place at the entrance of the Women and Newborn Center (the building on the northwest corner of the campus).
On Sept. 15, public self-guided tours will be offered from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. From 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., a variety of screenings and services will also be included at the 28th Annual Dixie Regional Community Health Fair. All tours will be self-guided, assisted by volunteers stationed along the tour route.
“We hope the community will come learn a little more about this expansion and enjoy popcorn, great music, and fireworks,” Cloward said.
The grand opening celebration was scheduled for September because all of the buildings are complete enough to tour and the weather is enjoyable for those who tour both the main building and the cancer center. Two of the four new buildings opened earlier this year, and two will open this fall.
“It is exciting to see the hospital growing,” said Mitchell Cloward, administrator of Dixie Regional Medical Center. “Having all hospital services on one campus means seamless coordination of care, more efficiency, and less redundancy of staff and equipment. Having all hospital services in one location again will transform the patient experience and support our ongoing efforts to offer compassionate, collaborative, cutting-edge healthcare.”
To better serve the community, the new Women and Newborn Center will open in November to house all clinical services for women and newborns. These include maternal fetal medicine, OB/GYN providers, labor and delivery services, C-section surgical rooms, Simply Birth low intervention birthing rooms, NICU, and mother and baby recovery rooms. Behavioral health will also be located in this building on the top level.
“Dixie Regional Medical Center has expanded and consolidated to meet the demands of our growing community,” said Brian Chadaz, governing board chair of Dixie Regional. “This project enables Dixie Regional Medical Center to continue to offer the great healthcare our community has come to expect and also allowed Dixie Regional to expand specialized services and add new technology.”
The new diagnostic and treatment building on the northeast corner of the hospital opened in March and contains all clinical lab services, 50 observation/specialty recovery beds, and two new high-tech surgical suites. The new neurosurgical suite is home to Intermountain’s first intraoperative MRI. This machine enables surgeons to view updated MRI images during surgery.
Across the hall, the new hybrid angioplasty surgical suite is used for catheter-based surgical procedures such as transcatheter aortic valve replacement.
“Having cutting edge technology such as the new interoperative MRI for brain surgery and the hybrid angiography suite in a community the size of ours is amazing,” said Chadaz. “Planning for the ability to house these large technology items was integral to the design for the expansion. Leaving room for future technology was also important.”
The new east tower opened in June and houses more of the services previously located on 400 East. Those services include the wound clinic, a larger dual-chamber hyperbaric chamber, inpatient neuro specialty rehabilitation, a larger 32-bed adult intensive care unit, a pediatrics unit, and shelled space for future growth. A specially designed rehabilitation terrain park is designed into the courtyard between the east tower and the existing hospital.
Lastly, the Intermountain Cancer Center of St. George will open in October and is located in a standalone building east of the hospital. The center is 120,000 square feet and will contain all traditional oncology patient services as well as the leading-edge technology of Intermountain Precision Genomics, including research labs, a DNA-sequencing facility, and a Stanford University Cancer Research Lab.
“This expansion project would not have been possible without the tremendous financial support and commitment of our great community,” said Cloward. “The spirit of giving that we have felt over and over again has made Dixie Regional and this expansion project a reality. We are extremely grateful.”
