As Centura Health's new "hospital of the future" in Colorado Springs nears completion, officials announced its anticipated opening date and offered a first glimpse into state-of-the-art innovations planned for the site.
St. Francis Hospital-Interquest, Centura's third hospital in the city, is set to be the "first single-specialty hospital of its kind" in the region with a focus on orthopedic and spine care, said Bill Lueck, director of new development for Penrose-St. Francis Health Services, the Centura unit for its Colorado Springs operations.
The 72-bed hospital southeast of Interstate 25 and InterQuest Parkway will also feature a full-service emergency department that is set to open at 12 a.m. July 11. Surgeries will begin July 12, Lueck said.
According to Centura spokesperson Lindsay Radford, the specialization is much needed in the state and requires specific equipment geared toward mostly elective surgeries.
"Colorado is a really active state, so there's a high usage of orthopedic services here," Radford said.
The Interquest hospital will include 64 inpatient beds, eight critical care beds (which could be expanded to 24 beds), 10 operating rooms with robotic equipment and 30 beds for surgical preparation and recovery, according to previous Gazette reporting. The emergency department will feature 16 bays, Lueck said Thursday.
The hospital has a price tag of $180Â million or about $2.7 million per bed, he said.
Stepping into a large operating room on Thursday, Lueck pointed to the ceiling where a high-tech AirFRAME system, by SLD Technology, will both direct airflow away from the patient during surgery and shed a special kind of light that disinfects the area.
"It allows us to be in the room with no detrimental impacts to humans, but very detrimental impacts to bugs and to bacteria," Lueck said.
Bill Lueck director of operations at Penrose-St. Francis Health Series talks about innovated technology in the middle of a new operating room at St. Francis Hospital-Interquest which is still under construction on Thursday, March 9, 2023. The new hospital features 10 780-square-foot operating rooms. (Parker Seibold, The Gazette)
Most of the building's rooms, including the emergency, inpatient and operating rooms, will be equipped with two-way telehealth capabilities allowing a surgeon to consult directly with other providers across the nation during surgery or allow for family visits, Lueck said.
"Connectivity to the outside world and the knowledge within the outside world is important," he said.
To be cost-effective and more environmentally conscious, Lueck said, the hospital won't feature "wasted space" like grand conference rooms or single-person offices but will include mostly communal workspaces for staff. "We believe that health care is changing, and we have to be extra efficient so we can bring the best world-class care to our community," he said.
Lueck believed some of the hospital's most fascinating technology is a Bluetooth and Wi-Fi system that will allow the "tracking of people and equipment" by connecting to badges on staff members and things like wheelchairs and knee replacement sets so that nothing is lost, and staff can find each other easily.
The technology will also extend to special patient wristbands, which will allow caregivers to be "hyper efficient," Lueck said. For example, a doctor can first check the location of each patient — from physical therapy rooms to the bathroom — and either locate them for a checkup or know to respect privacy.
The technology will also recognize when a care provider enters a patient's room.
"If you've ever been in a hospital bed, people are in and out of your room all day long, and half the time, you don't know who they are," Lueck said. "So when (a doctor) walks in the room, their face and bio pop up on the screen."
While one of two monitors secured to the wall facing the patient's bed will display a patient's electronic medical records, like X-ray images that can be moved and drawn upon with touchscreen technology, the other will serve not only as an entertainment unit, but as a way for patients to control their lighting, window blinds and other conditions as well as order food or call for a caregiver or chaplain.
The same functions can be controlled using an iPad attached to a reticulated arm extending from the head of the bed, Lueck said.
Common spaces in the building will include a coffee shop and cafeteria, a chapel and a 60-by-40-yard turf field for rehabilitation activities and outdoor relaxation. Construction of a separate medical office building and surgery on the 58-acre site is planned to begin in September.
In total, the hospital is expected to employ about 400 people and serve the booming InterQuest area. Radford said most of the orthopedic experts will move to the Interquest location, effectively freeing up facilities and services at Centura's other locations.
"Especially during the pandemic, there was so much need and people waiting so long for care," Radford said. "(This) is a chance to take some of the pressure off some of the other hospitals ... so they can then withstand having that added patient intake."
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