Hospital getting more room to operate

Eight new ORs opening this summer will help Valley Medical ‘do anything’

Valley Medical Center will open eight new operating rooms this summer, the second phase of the hospital’s new surgery center.

Once that phase is done, the surgery center will have 17 operating rooms.

What’s particularly significant about the new operating rooms is their size, hospital officials said. All are bigger than the largest of the current rooms.

“We can do anything in these rooms,” said Rich Roodman, Valley Medical’s chief executive officer. “They are designed for the future.”

That “anything” includes new surgical techniques and equipment that require space.

Hospital officials took members of the public and the Public Hospital District 1 commissioners on a tour of the rooms last week.

The new surgery center is part of an ongoing $200 million expansion of the hospital that includes a new seven-story tower that will house, among other essentials, a new emergency room the size of a football field.

Right now, the tower is a big hole easily visible on the hospital campus. The two-level surgery center is being built at a cost of about $50 million, according to hospital spokeswoman Dana Vander Houwen.

Included in the first phase was a new hospital lobby.

The hospital’s operating rooms are busy places, where about 13,000 procedures are done a year.

The first phase of the surgery center opened last spring, with nine operating rooms on the third floor. The second phase is on the second floor.

The new operating rooms are served by a pathology lab. Like the floor above, big-screen TVs will help medical personnel keep track of patients and surgeries.

The hospital is expecting an essential piece of equipment - elevators to connect the two floors – to arrive in early July. Todd Thomas, the hospital’s director of facilities, said elevator manufacturers can’t keep up with demand because of so much construction worldwide.

The hospital district includes Covington, an area of King County near Maple Valley, Renton, Kent and the south Bellevue area.

Valley Medical Center is in Renton. The organization also operates several clinics, including ones in Covington and Maple Valley.

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