Why this Fort Worth hospital had to build a new emergency room, helicopter pad
Medical City Fort Worth is dramatically expanding its footprint in Fort Worth’s hospital district with the opening next week of a new, $65 million patient tower.
The new building at 800 Ninth Avenue, which will begin accepting patients Wednesday, will feature an emergency room packed with modern design elements.
For example, outside the ER there are six extra-wide bays and plenty of room for modern ambulances.
Inside the ER, there is a separate decontamination room with its own exterior door, so, in the event a patient arrives with Ebola virus symptoms or perhaps has been exposed to dangerous chemicals in a drug lab, he or she doesn’t have to come in through the lobby and potentially contaminate bystanders.
Also, there is a separate room with extra safety specifications for behavioral health patients, who might be a danger to themselves or others. A special roll-down wall is available to stow away all the medical equipment and sharp instruments and keep them out of the patient’s reach.
The interior of the new building, known as Tower B, features lots of varied gray tones on the walls, floors and furnishings, with generous wood accents and low countertops.
“It has what I call a ‘wall-less’ effect, where we have a full view and full interaction with the patients and their families,” Jyric Sims, chief executive officer of Medical City Fort Worth, said during a tour of the new facility.
From the outside, perhaps the most obvious feature of the new building is the rooftop helicopter pad. Once the tower opens on Wednesday, patients being flown in for treatment will no longer have to land at the ground level helipad at Eighth Avenue and West Humboldt Street, more than 100 yards from the old emergency room in Medical City Fort Worth’s current building.
Instead, helicopters will arrive by rooftop, and patients can be taken by elevator directly to the emergency room. The result could be a time savings of several minutes, which can make a huge difference in a life-or-death situation.
The new building will house a 30-bed emergency department on the first floor, and a 28-bed neuroscience intensive care unit on the second floor for patients who have suffered strokes or have other nerve and brain conditions.
The third floor will remain vacant for now, but is available for expansion as soon as it’s needed, Sims said. Also, the three-story structure was built on a foundation capable of supporting four additional floors, so the building can be expanded vertically as needed in the coming years, he said.
Medical City Fort Worth’s old building at 900 Eighth Ave. (formerly Plaza Medical Center), will remain open for all other hospital needs, including surgeries, kidney transplants, cancer treatments and many other services. The two buildings will be connected by a second-floor sky walk over Ninth Avenue.
A ribbon-cutting ceremony that is expected to include city leaders and medical district dignitaries will be held Monday.
The growth of Medical City Fort Worth and changing medical care needs necessitated the construction of the new tower, Sims said.
For example, he said, the ER in the old building has three ambulance bays, but often can only fit two ambulances at a time because the bays are narrow. The bays were built for ambulances of a previous generation.
The ambulance bays at the new ER are just about big enough for a Mack truck.
This story was originally published December 13, 2018 at 10:50 AM.
