GIBSON CITY — Using a portion of a $3-million endowment from the estates of a Gibson City couple and their adopted daughter, Gibson Area Hospital is preparing to embark on a $6-million project to expand the hospital’s OB and surgery departments.

Termed the “2012 Project,” the expansion will create about 60 percent more space for the OB unit, while adding “state-of-the-art” amenities and increasing the number of delivery rooms from three to five, according to Rob Schmitt, the hospital’s chief executive officer. 

Also, Schmitt noted that each delivery room will be a private LDRP room (for labor, delivery, recovery and postpartum) — meaning expectant mothers stay in the same room from the time they enter the hospital to after they give birth. The hospital currently has no LDRP rooms.

The project will also add about 6,000 square feet to the surgical unit, creating space for six new private inpatient rooms for surgery patients and an additional surgery room. Also, with the additional private surgery and LDRP patient rooms, the hospital will be able to eliminate all of its “semi-private” rooms so that all 25 patient rooms in the hospital are private, Schmitt added.

The hospital plans to make way for the expansion by renovating a second-story addition that was constructed in 2005 but has been used only for storage ever since; and by building a new addition directly next to that on both the first and second stories. About 70 percent of the new space will be for the OB unit; the rest will be for the new surgical floor, Schmitt said.

The hospital plans to start the renovations and construction in March or April, Schmitt said. He said he hopes to have the new wing open by summer 2013.

“It’s going to be a great project. It’s going to be great for our organization and for the communities,” Schmitt said. “I believe we’re going to attract a lot more moms by having that new OB unit.”

Preliminary plans call for the $6 million project to be funded by three sources: a $2.5 million loan from Heartland Bank; $2 million from the hospital’s cash reserves; and $1.5 million from the Gibson Area Hospital Foundation, the hospital’s nonprofit fundraising arm.

Schmitt said the $1.5 million contributed by the foundation would come from a $3 million donation the foundation received a year ago from the DeWall family trusts — the largest donation the foundation has ever received. The late Earl and Laura DeWall of Gibson City set up trusts in their names as well as a trust in the name of their adopted daughter, the late Jeanne DeWall, many years ago, designating all of their assets to be turned over to the foundation upon their deaths and their daughter’s death.

Hospital officials initially thought the donation would total about $2.4 million, but after the sale of the DeWalls’ farmland, the total ended up exceeding $3 million, Schmitt said. The funds were not restricted for any particular use.

“You almost can’t put into words how great a gift like that is,” Schmitt said. “It’s a great, great gift. We’re very pleased to have been that well thought-of by the Dewalls to leave us that bequest.”

Specific expansion plans
The 2012 Project is the most expensive the hospital has undertaken since 2005, when it expanded its emergency department for a cost of $7.1 million.

Although the project involves more than expanding the OB wing, Schmitt said the “primary driver” of the project is the creation of a more modern and expanded OB unit. The OB department is the only patient-care service still operated out of the oldest portion of the hospital, built in 1952, Schmitt said.

“They definitely need new space. They’ve  needed it for a while,” Schmitt said. “We’ve kind of talked about OB moving to this new space for the last five years (following the expansion of the emergency department). ... We put the second floor up there but just left it empty, knowing we were going to do something in the future.”

The OB unit will be relocated on the hospital’s second floor to the building addition above the emergency room, which was built in 2005 at the same time the emergency department was expanded. The building addition will be renovated to include the five LDRP rooms, a nursery and a C-section surgery room for the OB department, Schmitt said, along with the six new inpatient surgery rooms. The OB unit will increase from 4,600 square feet to 7,400, Schmitt said.

The space the OB unit currently uses, located on the hospital’s second floor, will then be converted into an outpatient-only unit, Schmitt said.

“All outpatient patients will be on that unit, separate from the inpatient patients,” Schmitt said.

Meanwhile, the new surgery unit will be housed in a to-be-built addition to both the first and second floors of the hospital, directly next to the emergency department on the first floor and the new OB wing and six surgery patient rooms on the second floor, Schmitt said. The surgery unit will be expanded by 2,500 square feet on the first floor and 3,500 feet on the second, Schmitt said.

‘Multitude’ of advantages
The advantages of the expansion are “a multitude,” Schmitt said. Among them, the project will update the hospital’s facilities and amenities to “what’s kind of the standard model of having LDRPs for OB delivery.”

The new OB unit will look similar to any modern OB in the area, Schmitt said.

“It’s going to look just the same as if you were in any of those other hospitals,” Schmitt said. “It will be just as nice, all new.”

Schmitt said he hopes the modernized OB will be “part of the draw” in attracting more expectant mothers. Currently, the hospital does between 150 and 180 deliveries a year.

“I’m anticipating, once we get the new addition done, that we’ll push that number up to over 200 — because of the enticement of the new space, the new surroundings,” Schmitt said. “There’s roughly 400 deliveries a year in our service area, so I would expect us to be delivering about half of those.”

Another advantage of the project is that the hospital will be able to eliminate all of its “semi-private” rooms for inpatient patients through the additional private rooms.

“Right now, we have maybe half private rooms and the other half are semi-private rooms,” Schmitt said. “By adding these new 11 beds, it’s not going to increase our bed capacity, because we’re limited to 25 (through Medicare). So we’ll simply take beds out of the semi-private rooms and move them upstairs, and then we’ll end up with all private rooms throughout the hospital.”

Another benefit of the expansion: The new OB and surgery space, along with the conversion of the existing OB into an outpatient services unit, is expected to create 15 to 20 full-time employees, including such positions as nurses, housekeepers, maintenance workers and surgical technicians, Schmitt said.

Lots of planning already done
Hospital officials have been planning the expansion for “this entire (past) year,” Schmitt said.
Involved in the planning are the hospital’s contraced architect, Shive-Hattery Architecture and Engineering, based in Bloomington; and general contractor, Walsh Construction, which has offices in Chicago and Springfield.

“We already  have schematic drawings done by the architect, and we’ve already hired the general contractor,” Schmitt said, “and we’re getting ready to send in preliminary plans to the state of Illinois for their initial review.

“It takes a long time (to plan), which is why a year ago I got permission from the (hospital) board to start the process,” Schmitt said.

Schmitt said he hopes local contractors can help with the project, noting that they will have a chance to submit bids as subcontractors to Walsh Construction.

“All of the subcontract work will be bid out,” Schmitt said. “And almost all of the subcontract work will be as local as possible. If we have local contractors who are bidding and want to do the work, we certainly want to utilize them for that. And the general contractor knows that.”

New storage building
The equipment that was being stored in the addition to the hospital that will become the new OB unit is being transferred to a 4,000-square-foot, climate-controlled storage building across Melvin Street from the hospital.

The storage building is being built and is expected to be finished “in another month,” once siding is installed on its exterior and heating and ventilation and air conditioning systems are installed, Schmitt said.

“It’s going to hopefully maintain the temperature of 72 degrees all the time,” Schmitt said.