Registered nurse Melissa Maranto gives a tour of the two proposed patient room mock-ups at the first floor of University of Texas Medical Branch’s John Sealy Hospital on Tuesday.
GALVESTON — In its quest to attract more patients with health insurance, the University of Texas Medical Branch will double the size of rooms at John Sealy Hospital, even as administrators struggle to recover bed capacity lost to Hurricane Ike.
The $90 million modernization project, funded by the private Sealy and Smith Foundation and other philanthropic organizations, calls for enlarging rooms to 280 square feet and making the spaces more appealing to patients who increasingly are demanding amenities from hospital operators.
To resume operating as a respected regional hospital where students learn from a wide variety of cases, the medical branch must reclaim the 532-bed capacity it had before the Sept. 13 storm flooded 1 million square feet of campus buildings.
During the project, John Sealy will have 300 public beds, 80 bassinets for newborns and 108 beds for prisoners treated through a state contract. The prison hospital won’t be renovated, officials said.
The medical branch also can open up to 36 beds in the R. Waverley Smith Pavilion, giving it 416 beds for the general public.
When the project is complete in 2015, the hospital will have 198 double-sized rooms and 80 bassinets, leaving only 278 spots for the general public. Counting the prison beds, that’s only 386, far less than pre-Ike levels.
Medical branch doctors would treat some patients at mainland hospitals to meet peak demand, officials said.
To get to pre-storm capacity, the medical branch is counting on $150 million in state funding, which, with money from Sealy & Smith Foundation, would build a tower — known as the Jennie Sealy replacement hospital — adding 220 beds.
Uncertain Times
But lawmakers made the $150 million contingent on a local funding mechanism. Come November, county leaders may ask voters to approve a new tax to meet that legislative demand, a politically unattractive prospect.
Because the medical branch must move the pharmacy, blood bank, sterilization systems and other vital equipment and services — all swamped by storm surge — to higher ground, restoring 532 beds at John Sealy is impossible, officials said.
Although doubling the size of the rooms may seem counterintuitive in such uncertain times, it’s necessary to attract patients with insurance and to teach students in modern settings, Michael R. Shriner, vice president of operations and facilities, said.
At some point, the medical branch will have to stop modernization efforts until construction begins on the Jennie Sealy tower, which would begin in 2011 and last three years.
It’s difficult to know how much bed capacity will be lost to doubling room sizes, Shriner said.
“Separation from the impact of Ike and the modernization is difficult since the storm damaged our elevators and other building systems,” he said.
“This reduced capacity in elevators and systems would prohibit bringing all the pre-Ike beds back to service irrespective of modernization efforts.”
‘Rest Of The Medical World’
John Sealy Hospital opened in 1978. Its last major modernization was eight years ago in only one unit on the 10th floor.
Nationally, the average hospital room size is about 250 square feet. Aesthetics and patient comfort aren’t the only factors in modernization, Shriner said. Small rooms get cramped when groups of students make rounds, large medical equipment is needed or when families want to spend the night, Shriner said.
“In order to teach physicians, you need to teach them in a setting similar to what’s out in the rest of the medical world,” Shriner said. “Our rooms are not indicative of that.”
Dispensing Perks
Hospitals are so eager for patients with private health insurance, they’re throwing in everything from gift certificates for pedicures to cooking classes and providing flat-screen TVs, according to reports.
If the medical branch wants to compete for insured patients, it must push perks, too, industry observers said.
“The patient is the consumer,” said Dr. J. Trey Vanderburg, who owns Medical Practice Dynamics, a consulting firm based in Marshall.
Some patients choose hospitals the same way shoppers pick Target over Wal-Mart, perceiving rightly or not that one is cleaner or better than the other, Vanderburg said.
The average cost of a one-night hospital stay is $1,000, which includes nursing, diagnostic testing and operating-room costs but excludes such things as emergency care.
More patients want bang for their buck, Vanderburg said.
“The cost of a hospital room is twice as expensive as any hotel you and I will ever stay in,” Vanderburg said.
“If you paid $500 for a hotel, basically, they wait on you hand and foot. Hospitals don’t have to do that. But the ones that do? It makes the difference to the patients. They do their research. If one good thing happens, they tell five people. If a bad thing happens, they tell 25.”
Modernization work at John Sealy Hospital begins in November.
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What you missed • July 5 — Medical branch recovery money comes with strings attached. • July 16 — Some services traditionally offered to the medical branch will be missing for years to come, and some others will never return.
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Coming soon • Faced with a large population of poor and underinsured patients, the medical branch was struggling financially even before Hurricane Ike. State lawmakers took steps to ease the burden, but was it enough and what more could be done? • What would national health care reform mean to the medical branch?
