The hospital announced Feb. 5 it will completely renovate its pediatric areas to provide a safe, welcoming environment for children and parents. The hospital hopes it will also attract additional pediatric specialist physicians to add new and enhanced services in addition to those already available.

“There’s nothing more important in my life than my five children,” said Bill Voloch, Wesley’s interim president and CEO. “That’s why, as a father, I am so thrilled to share this news. This new hospital will provide a new, unprecedented level of pediatric care to the families we serve.”

The new project will incorporate a new façade on the hospital’s exterior, along with a renovated entrance, lobby and elevators. The hospital is also planning to complete a renovation of the pediatric intensive care unit, creating a new, all-private 15-bed PICU. In addition, Wesley’s 30-bed pediatric unit will receive aesthetic and heating and cooling system upgrades.

The hospital will also extend the children’s hospital theme to other areas of the hospital that may treat pediatric patients, such as the pediatric emergency room and radiology department, according to Dr. Lindall Smith, medical director of Wesley’s pediatric intensive care unit.

“I know first-hand how important the environment of care is for pediatric patients and their families,” Smith said in a statement. “That’s why this project includes the little things – like accommodations for parents to sleep in the room with their children – that will be incredibly impactful for children and parents.”

Wesley currently offers care in 20 different pediatric subspecialties – from its pediatric surgery clinic to pediatric oncology services – but is actively recruiting additional specialists to enhance and add additional services to the new hospital. The recruitment of new physicians and these facility enhancements will offer the specialized care that many pediatric patients currently have to leave Wichita to receive.

“The improvements to our facility will make the patient experience for children a much more pleasant and comforting one,” said Tripp Owings, Wesley’s vice president of pediatric operations and business development, in a statement. “But a facility like this is also necessary to recruit the physicians needed to build out the enhanced slate of services we envision. We are already seeing increased interest, and we expect to announce a significant number of new physicians and services over the coming months of the hospital’s construction.”

Wesley also plans to continue the development of its WESLEYCare Telemedicine Network to help extend these pediatric services throughout Kansas, reducing the need for patients in rural areas to travel to Wichita.

“We want to provide services for our pediatric patients as close to home as possible,” Voloch said in a statement. “No parents want to travel unnecessarily for care when their child is hurting.”

Wesley is still in the process of finalizing plans and timelines, but construction is expected to take 12 to 18 months. The hospital will also be conducting focus groups in the coming months around the naming and branding of the hospital and will be seeking input from patients, staff, physicians and the community.

This is one of several recent investments Wesley has made in new and upgraded facilities. The hospital completed a $36 million renovation of its women’s hospital last month.

“Wesley has an incredible team that provides exceptional care to our pediatric patients,” Voloch said in a statement. “Now, they’ll have a dedicated facility that matches their level of compassion and expertise.”

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“We always treat our projects as if it’s our family on the opposite side of the wall. We really stress that philosophy,” said Joshua Rhodes, project manager with JE Dunn.

Phase I included updates to 33 private patient rooms, the nurses’ station and hallways and also incorporated LINC technology, which delivers access to a patient’s clinical information, offering the opportunity to update medical records, verify medication and review the patient’s last scans and test results, according to Wesley.

The sensitive nature of the project was well suited given JE Dunn’s core values. JE Dunn has a health care training program, which every person hired must complete, that hones in on the philosophy of visualizing one’s family in that particular health care facility. Everyone that steps foot on a JE Dunn job has bought into this philosophy, Rhodes said.

“Working in a women’s center is a different dynamic,” Rhodes said. “If we have some major complaints going on or if we are impacting that environment, we will shut down. That goes hand in hand with our philosophy that if it was my wife in the room, I would want to make sure she was in the best environment possible.”

The timeline on the project needed to be quick because the construction team required the take over of patient rooms in order to complete the project.

“We were on a very strict timeline to get in and get out so they could have those rooms back and use them for their intended use,” Rhodes said.

To expedite construction, the construction team experimented with prefabricated bathrooms and head walls. The construction team prefabricated 12 head walls and decided to panelize the bathrooms. Given the conditions of the construction site, the panelized bathrooms did not fit the project.

“Panelizing the bathroom’s did not work out in a renovation setting,” Rhodes said. “You have a bunch of existing conditions in a hospital that lends itself to making prefab a good option because when we do prefab and we are modeling, we assume everything is consistent and repetitive. When in a renovation like this one with an 80-year-old building, nothing is the same from room to room.”

However, the prefabricated head walls were very beneficial to the project, Rhodes said. Subcontractors are currently prefabricating 17 walls, and 34 head walls are being purchased in order to compare if buying or prefabricating head walls is the more cost-effective decision for a health care renovation project.

The second phase of construction will include renovations of the third, fourth and fifth floors, and the final phase will include an additional postpartum room and outpatient surgery rooms. The renovation is scheduled for completion in December 2014.

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