After two years of construction, the first part of a redesigned and expanded emergency department at PeaceHealth Southwest Medical Center in Vancouver will open July 16.
PeaceHealth Southwest Medical Center has been treating patients in a temporary emergency room but will switch to the newly finished space. Then, the final phase of construction will begin.
When completed in 2025, the new emergency department will encompass 37,000 square feet, with 56 treatment rooms, 11 transitional rooms, four trauma rooms, 24 observation rooms and eight ambulance ports.
“The initial emergency department was built in the late ’80s, early ’90s. We’ve had one significant remodel since then, but the population has grown,” Emergency Services Medical Director Jason Hanley said. “The emergency department facility in general just needed an upgrade in terms of room size, and making it look respectable to the point that our patients deserve.”
The process
On Friday afternoon, a boom lift raised a construction crew to work on the building’s glass panes. Inside, patient rooms are double the size of those in the old emergency department. In addition to treatment and trauma rooms, the building will include dedicated pediatric rooms. The space will also include an entry with adjacent parking for safe traffic flow.
Open communication between all team members was imperative for the success of the project, said Rick Sanders, PeaceHealth’s director of planning and design.
“That’s been the key to the success: open communication, people working back and forth and making sure that we’re taking care of the community that we serve,” Sanders said. “From the very, very beginning, we were making sure that we were taking care of our caregivers. We had a lot of input. We did mock-ups of the rooms, and we put sticky notes everywhere with ideas.”
The new building will improve patient
