Wynn Hospital opened six months ago. How is it doing so far, and what is on the horizon?

Believe it or not, 600 babies have already been born at the Wynn Hospital in downtown Utica.

The Mohawk Valley Health System hospital opened on Oct. 27 and health system officials held a press conference in one of the hospital’s trauma rooms Wednesday morning to talk about the hospital’s first six months.

President/CEO Darlene Stromstad talked about the babies and other six-month statistics:

• 8,000 patients have been admitted to the hospital.

• More than 10,000 surgeries have been performed.

• The emergency department has seen almost 37,000 patients, an average of 80 per day.

• Valets stationed at the hospital’s front doors have parked 40,000 cars.

• More than 108,000 people have visited the hospital, an average of 600 a day.

But staff are still getting used to the new space and health system leadership is still making changes and adjustments to get things working as smoothly and efficiently as possible, she said. Experts say that it takes staff about a year to become fully accustomed to a new hospital, Stromstad said.

In fact, staff used the press conference to announce three new things. Staff have been working on a more inclusive menu and the hospital now offers a halal menu for Muslims, developed in association with a local Iman, Stromstad said.

Starting Monday, valet parking will be offered for the emergency department where parking has proven a challenge, Stromstad said. It has been offered at the front entrance since the hospital opened since the adjacent parking garage being built by Oneida County isn’t finished yet.

And a new program has started for the families of surgery patients, said Dr. Sunil Motta, chair of anesthesiology at the hospital and part of the private practice Mohawk Valley Anesthesia group. Family members come into the hospital before the date of surgery to take a tour of the areas where they’ll be and to get familiar with the environment, he said.

Rumor control

The numbers show that, despite many negative comments about the hospital made on social media (many of them based on false rumors), patients are coming to the hospital.

Many patients have told Dr. Sushma Kaul, president of the hospital’s medical staff, that they had reservations about coming to the hospital, based on what they’d heard and seen online. But they have been surprised and pleased by the care they’ve received, she said.

One patient even told her pregnant daughter, who had planned to deliver elsewhere, that she had to come to Wynn Hospital instead, Kaul said. And the daughter did have her baby there and was pleased by her experience, Kaul said.

“It’s a beautiful building,” she said. “it’s not just a beautiful building. The people who are caring for the community are great people ... We just have one focus and that is patients.”

Motta acknowledged that the hospital’s surgical program got off to a bit of a rough start. An air handling problem had delayed the opening of the operating rooms by a few days.

But he’s received many emails and letters from patients and their families thanking his practice for the way they were taken care of during surgery, he said. One person even sent lottery tickets as a thank you, Motta said.

Progress in emergency and surgical departments

As staff work to address hitches and improve efficiency, the most progress has been made in the emergency department and in surgery, Stromstad said. ER patients are getting seen and then getting released or admitted to a hospital room much faster than in the begining, which has driven up patient satisfaction, she said.

In the surgical suite, only 40% of surgeries started on time when the hospital opened, Motta said. Now about 80% do, he said, which, Stromstad pointed out, is above the national average.

Kaul said she’s noticed changes, too, among the staff. Early on, she would see nurses struggling to find supplies and getting frustrated, she said.

“That has definitely settled down,” she said. “I don’t hear it any more.”

And when the hospital opened, staff from two different hospitals with slightly different ways of doing things had to learn to work together.

“In the beginning, you would hear complaining and rumbling at the two cultures coming together,” Kaul said. “And that has significantly improved.”

One area, though, has never needed any improvement, Stromstad said. From the beginning patients have loved the patient rooms, which are all singles with windows that let in the light and give views over downtown Utica, she said.

And they love the design of patient units that did away with central nursing stations and puts nurses within view of their patients’ rooms, she said.

“The personal connection between patient and nurse,” Stromstad said, “is exactly what we wanted it to be.”

Focus on parking issues, safety and security

Parking has been one of the bigger issues facing the hospital since it opened, Stromstad acknowledged. An adjacent parking garage being built by Oneida County was supposed to open in March, but that opening has been delayed until July, she said.

That’s why the hospital starting offering valet parking for visitors at the front door, a service she expects to keep in some form after the garage opens, she said. MVHS also runs a shuttle for employees from the hospital to the St. Luke’s Campus parking lot to the hospital and has leased the Kennedy Parking Garage from the city, Stromstad said.

Safety and security has been another big priority for health system officials over the past six months, she said. More than 400 cameras dot the hospital, the parking lots, windows and sidewalks and they are monitored by staff 24/7, she said. Security staff are also available to walks patients, visitors or staff to their cars and, as of last week, more than 500 people have taken advantage of the offer, she said.

The 'wow' factor at Wynn Hospital

So, with a brand new building full of cutting-edge technology and modern design, what features do staff find just plain cool?

For Kaul, it’s looking at the city. “I get out of the elevator. I look out those huge windows,” she said, “and, oh my God, some of the views are breathtaking.”

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She and many co-workers even had great views of the recent eclipse from those windows, she said.

For Stromstad, it’s the lab where tests are run for inpatients and ER patients 24/7. Every specimen gets a label with a bar code. They get sent to the lab through a pneumatic tube. Once there, they’re put into a machine that reads that code and sends them on a conveyor belt to the proper machine to run the test.

Tests are performed hands-free with less opportunity for error or contamination (of samples or workers), Stromstad said.

If the results require immediate follow-up, bells ring and the lab staff reviews those results right away, informing the doctor of them if necessary, she said.

“Our lab is the most automated,” Stromstad said, “certainly in all of the Northeast of the United States if not farther.”

This article originally appeared on Observer-Dispatch: Open six months, Wynn Hospital announces inclusive menu, valet parking