DCH looks to storp flooding in future
May 23—After being hit with two flash floods in the last four years, Daviess Community Hospital is looking for a way to keep history from being repeated.
"We brought in someone to look at the problem and they have reported to the hospital board on things that are being worked on to keep it from happening again," said Daviess Community Hospital CEO Tracy Conroy. "We are having conversations with the state and the city. There are options being put together to try and lesson the likelihood of this happening again. We can't guarantee it will never happen again, but we want to mitigate it as much as possible."
During both flood events, heavy rains filled the combined sewers that serve the hospital. The water backed up in the storm drains and flowed out of drainage grates in the basement.
"The flooding was obviously, unexpected and became a distraction and frustration," said Conroy. "Our ORs were down for six weeks and during that time we could not do invasive surgery for six weeks while we renovated."
That flooding damaged the operating room, radiology department and pharmacy. The resulting damage had the hospital move forward with a planned upgrade of the facilities, while the repairs were underway.
"If there is a positive side to this, it is that we now have a beautiful, renovated OR with an improved process and flow for patients. We are working on radiology right now and it is going to be new, improved and beautiful. Then we will get work done in the pharmacy. The work is all things we had in our long-term facility plan for two or three years down the road. We are now able to implement those changes to have better service for the community."
The latest flooding came while the hospital was in the midst of an $8.5 million renovation project.
The first half of that project, which involved relocating the Intensive Care Unit and updating the rooms in the med-surg unit on the second floor, was completed last fall and now the project is concentrating on the expansion of the emergency department.
"We are still on schedule, which is exciting," said Conroy. "We will be moving to the larger part that has been renovated by the end of June. That will give us more rooms and more space available in our ER. We expect there to still be some frustrations, but we expect it to be completed by December. The budget is also still on target."
In other business, the board's nominating committee is recommending the re-appointment of Dr. Suresh Lohano and Kent Norris to the hospital board along with proposed new member Pete Parsons. The committee is searching for one more person to take a seat on the board.
Officials also said events tied to National Hospital Month went well and that Jennifer Shaw was named the DCH Nurse of the Year. A computer issue with DCH's management partner Ascension Hospitals is causing no problems locally.
Ascension announced earlier this month that their systems were hacked. DCH was separated from Ascension and officials say the hack is not creating any problems.
"It is business as usual between us and Ascension," said Conroy. "We are not connected to their IT system. We were not impacted. They are still working through that."
