For the past two weeks, IU Health Frankfort Hospital officials and personnel have been setting up and critiquing its ‘Cardboard City’ in a space provided by Centurion Solutions. The reason behind this is simple according to IU Health President Kelly Braverman.
“It’s an IU Health standard,” she said. “This is how we go about the new buildings that we are creating. This is a cardboard size rendering of the (new) hospital to scale. It’s their space. We want to make sure they have a hand in designing it.”
In an approximate space of about 50,000 square feet, IU Health personnel from all departments is seeing how the new hospital will flow and work.
“All last week the crew was here setting up and cutting cardboard to make the walls and the outline,” said Braverman. “This whole week, the clinical teams are all in and even our environmental services team. Everybody’s here seeing that the space can flow and if it actually works.”
With Friday being the last day IU Health will be in the building, Braverman said they were bringing “patients” so they could get a feel for how things will be.
Braverman said people come in with the mindset of a patient and think of the following items: How do I think about the flow? How many steps does it take me to get here if I’m sitting in this section? What am I looking at? How do I feel coming through this space?
“We’re bringing in different generations,” said Braverman. “We’ve heard from our younger generations already that we probably need more spaces to charge their devices.”
Braverman added she just feels very honored to be a part of this undertaking.
“The team at every turn just keeps mentioning ‘patient’ and that is probably the biggest pride point that I have,” said Braverman. “The team is constantly determining how this tweak or how this modification will be better for the patient. It’s a good place to be.”
IU Health has got almost all of the approvals from the city and county it had to go through to get where they are. The only thing that remains is the third and final reading on an ordinance from the Frankfort City Council to make everything official. That should happen at the next meeting on Tuesday, November 13, at 7 p.m.
The $30 million project would be built next to the current facility and have no more than 25 beds because it is a critical access hospital. The current facility has around 85 beds of which an average of 12 beds per days are being used. IU officials also plan to vacate Oak Street from White to Hackett and move the heliport from the Clinton County Fairgrounds to the southeast corner of the new facility.
The new facility will be built behind where the current facility is. Once the new facility is built and operating, the old facility will be demolished.