Reston Hospital Center is putting the finishing touches on a new five-story patient tower that will significantly increase capacity and the medical services offered at the hospital campus.
The West Wing Patient Tower will feature a high-tech family center, an expanded surgical unit, a medical/oncology unit, as well as the hospital’s laboratory and administrative offices. An official ribbon-cutting of the patient tower will be held Thursday evening and services will begin to be offered by the end of the month.
“Now we’ve got the best of both worlds,” said Jane Raymond, vice president and chief operating officer of the hospital. “We’ve got a great facility and a great staff to go along with it.”
Construction of the new tower is the centerpiece of the Reston Hospital Center’s $100 million expansion that began in 2001, as hospital officials sought to meet the medical needs of an aging population.
“We’re responding to the needs of the community,” Raymond said. “As baby boomers grow older, we’re seeing things like more heart attacks, more cancer.”
The new tower will add 60 additional beds, increasing the overall capacity of the hospital and providing more private rooms for patients. The surgical unit will gain 24 additional beds and the medical/oncology unit will gain 14 beds.
The heart of the new tower, however, is the expanded maternity unit, which grows from nine to 14 private rooms for labor, delivery and recovery. Also, the Family Center will almost double the number of private postpartum rooms, and will feature a 24-bassinet nursery and a high-tech neonatal intensive care unit.
THE NEW FAMILY CENTER, which will begin receiving patients the week of April 26, is designed to make the birthing process more comfortable, said William A. Adams, president and CEO of Reston Hospital Center in a statement.
“Elegant, secure and comfortable surroundings for the whole family allow them to focus on the excitement of the birth of their new family member,” Adams said. “We know that the birth of a child is one of a family’s most important and cherished moments, and we have designed our center to provide them with the peace of mind so that they can fully enjoy this time.”
The Family Center is located on the second and third floors of the new patient tower. Because all of the maternity facilities are nearby, the center is prepared for any situation that might arise, such as premature or critically ill births.
Security is a major concern for modern maternity units, Raymond said, so the Family Center will require all new newborns to wear a security bracelet that triggers an alarm if taken away from the facility.
THE RESTON HOSPITAL center opened in 1986 with 127 beds, but over the past decade the patient care needs of Fairfax and Loudoun counties have substantially increased.
The $100 million expansion is intended to meet those rising needs of the community and to alleviate increasingly cramped working conditions for the hospital staff.
Now that the patient tower project is completed, the original Reston Hospital Center facility will begin major renovations. Almost every department in the hospital will be expanded, including doubling the number of beds in the Progressive Care Unit and in the Critical Care Unit. The hospital’s Operating Rooms, the Radiology Department, the cafeteria, the medical records facility and more will be renovated.
When all construction is complete in 2005, the hospital will have a total of 187 beds, all in private rooms.