GAINESVILLE, Fla. — A ribbon-cutting was held at the University of Florida (UF) Health Cancer Center’s Circle of Hope on Nov 2. Hundreds gathered to hear the dedication for the new UF Health Heart and Vascular Hospital and the new UF Health Neuromedicine Hospital that will meet an increasing need for specialized care.

The new 500,000-square-foot complex had a budget of $425 million. Madison, Wis.-headquartered Flad & Associates was the architect on the project, and the hospital selected Skanska USA, headquartered in Parsippany-Troy Hills, N.J., to do the construction work. The building’s engineering firm was Affiliated Engineers Inc. from its local Gainesville office. UF Health began construction of the building in January of 2015.

The new complex has 216 private patient rooms, with the UF Health Heart and Vascular Hospital occupying the south wing of the building that includes 120 of the total beds count. The UF Health Neuromedicine Hospital occupies the north wing of the building and includes 96 beds from the total count.  

The first floor of both hospitals will have radiology, presurgery, laboratory and other support services so that patients will be able to have most of their healthcare needs met in one building. Inpatient rooms will be on the upper floors of both hospitals. In addition, the two hospitals will feature multiple hybrid operating rooms with the capability of adapting to rapidly changing medical technology.

The two hospitals combined have five general and three hybrid heart and vascular operating rooms. Of the seven neuromedicine operating rooms, two have MRI scanners attached to the room, which allow doctors to safely perform an MRI scan mid-surgery without having to transport patients to a new suite.

The new facility was built with patient comfort in mind, according to Rossana Passaniti, UF Health media relations coordinator in a recent interview with the Alligator, a local news source. Artwork by local Gainesville artists hangs on the walls of both hospitals, and a calming color scheme and warm lighting were chosen to reflect nature, according to Passaniti.

Patients from UF Health Shands Hospital in neurological and cardiological intensive-care units will be moved to the new hospitals on Dec. 10, and new patients can be seen starting on Dec. 11.

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There was a 46 percent decrease in central line-associated bloodstream infections (CLABSI) between 2008 and 2013, according to a report recently released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. However, additional work is needed to continue to improve patient safety, the annual National and State Healthcare-associated Infection Progress Report shows.

CDC’s health care-associated infections (HAI) progress report details how each state and the country are doing in eliminating six infection types that hospitals are required to report to CDC. For the first time, this year’s HAI progress report includes state-specific data about hospital lab-identified methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) bloodstream infections and Clostridium difficile (C. difficile) infections.

The CDC report provides an update to previous reports detailing progress toward the goal of eliminating HAIs. The report summarizes data submitted to CDC’s National Healthcare Safety Network (NHSN), a health care-associated infection tracking system, which is used by more than 14,500 health care facilities across all 50 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico. On any given day, approximately one in 25 U.S. patients has at least one infection contracted during the course of their hospital care.

“Hospitals have made real progress to reduce some types of health care-associated infections – it can be done,” said CDC Director Tom Frieden in a statement. “The key is for every hospital to have rigorous infection control programs to protect patients and health care workers, and for health care facilities and others to work together to reduce the many types of infections that haven’t decreased enough.”

Although the latest CDC report didn’t cover it, the majority of C. difficile infections and MRSA infections develop in the community or are diagnosed in health care settings more than hospitals. Other recent reports on infections caused by germs such as MRSA and C. difficile suggest that infections in hospitalized patients only account for about one-third of all the health care-associated infections.

The CDC says that when health care facilities, care teams and individual doctors and nurses are aware of infection control problems and take specific steps to prevent them, rates of targeted HAIs can decrease dramatically. For example, increased attention to the prevention of catheter-associated urinary tract infections resulted in a reversal of the recent increase seen in these infections.

“Health care-associated infection data give health care facilities and public health agencies knowledge to design, implement and evaluate HAI prevention efforts,” said Patrick Conway, deputy administrator for innovation and quality and chief medical officer of the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services, in a statement. “Medicare’s quality-measurement reporting requires hospitals to share this information with the CDC, demonstrating that, together, we can dramatically improve the safety and quality of care for patients.”

The HAI progress report can be found on the CDC’s website.

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