The University of Kentucky Board of Trustees has approved the next phase of the fit-out for UK Albert B. Chandler Hospital’s Pavilion A, along with a renovation of Samaritan Hospital’s emergency department.
The plan for Chandler Hospital includes an additional 64-bed patient care facility on the 11th floor. Six more operating rooms will also be created, including an additional hybrid operating room, which incorporates advanced medical imaging and robotic technology. In addition, the plan, which requires $75 million to be financed through agency funds, calls for radiology services to be relocated and expanded within Pavilion A. The hospital’s blood bank will also be relocated.
At UK’s Good Samaritan Hospital, roughly 12,000 square feet of the hospital’s emergency department will be renovated in phases over the next two to three years. Improvements will include private patient rooms, improved staff support space, expanded service capabilities, and a 1,250-square-foot expansion of the patient and family waiting area.
UK HealthCare opened eight operating rooms along with one of the country’s largest hybrid operating rooms in Pavilion A in 2012. A 64-bed cardiovascular patient unit opened on Pavilion A's eighth floor in December, and construction is currently underway to fit-out patient care facilities on the ninth and tenth floors. The UK Board also approved replacement of the hospital kitchen and cafeteria, relocation of the Magnetic Resonance Imaging to Pavilion A and relocation of the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) in June.
"Our rapid growth — going from 25th to 75th percentile among academic medical centers — has led to us playing catch up for the past decade to meet current patient demands for our services that include care for the most critically ill patients who need complex and advanced subspecialty care," said Dr. Michael Karpf, UK executive vice president for health affairs, in a release on the fit-out and renovations. "UK HealthCare is the only provider in the Commonwealth, and in this region, for some of these very high-level services, and our ability to care for these patients is very important for the people we serve and their families."