Via Christi St. Joseph hospital’s $62 million renovation ‘not just a facelift’

When work wraps up on a $50 million renovation project at Via Christi Hospital St. Joseph next year, the complex will be returning to its community hospital roots.

“Project Renewal” is an effort to bring back and expand Via Christi’s behavioral health services at St. Joseph and convert all of its patient rooms to private rooms. With a complete slate of behavioral health services back in the fold, St. Joseph will once again provide a spectrum of care for families in southeast Wichita, executives said.

Separately, the seven-story hospital at 3600 E. Harry is also undergoing a $12.5 million exterior update that includes a new “skin” and windows.

“It’s not just a facelift from our standpoint,” said St. Joseph president Laurie Labarca. “It really drives down to good delivery of care that’s also innovative and meets community needs.”

The project has been planned for some time, Labarca and other executives said.

Funding for the project came partly through a capital campaign by the nonprofit health system with a goal of raising $3 million.

Monica Coen, chief philanthropy officer for Via Christi Philanthropy, said that goal was exceed by $200,000. A separate fundraiser underway to support and expand the hospital’s behavioral health services programs has raised $275,000, Coen said.

The bulk of the funding came from Ascension, Via Christi’s parent company.

“In addition to the strong community support for this project ... it really is made possible through Ascension Health’s commitment to our local ministry here in Kansas,” said Todd Conklin, chief operating officer of Via Christi Health.

The biggest part of the project is moving Via Christi’s outpatient and inpatient behavioral health services from their 17-year location at 8901 E. Orme to St. Joseph. Most of those services — except a senior behavioral health unit — were moved from St. Joseph in 2001 to the Orme location.

The return of those services to St. Joseph includes relocating outpatient behavioral health services to the Clifton Medical Building across from St. Joseph, opening a psychiatric observation unit for 16 adult patients on the hospital’s lower level, and opening a 12-bed medical psychiatric unit for behavioral health patients who also need treatment for medical conditions.

“One of the things we realized having a separate behavioral health campus was that those ... patients have medical needs and it was difficult to deliver those medical services on a non-medical campus,” said John Womack, a St. Joseph hospitalist and chairman of the department of medicine.

In all, two floors of the hospital are being dedicated to inpatient behavioral health services for adults and adolescents. A new unit for children 4 to 11 needing inpatient behavioral health services is located on the same floor as the adolescent unit.

“There’s about 75 kids (4 to 100) a year that leave the community that need inpatient (behavioral health) care,” Labarca said.

St. Joseph ‘heritage’

For the renovations — which include revamping a 29-room medical and surgical unit — St. Joseph included physicians and other hospital caregivers in the design of medical and behavioral health rooms. In behavioral health rooms, the emphasis was on safety, Labarca said, looking at options for furniture, fixtures and other things in a typical hospital room that patients could use to harm themselves.

They also looked at making all renovated rooms more efficient, including making a physical mockup of a room that was used throughout the design process.

“It wasn’t just paint on the walls,” said Womack. “We really looked at the space and then when we go into the mockup we could say, ‘OK, if I’m going to be standing here, where’s the patient going to (be)? And if family’s here, where are they going to sit?’

“We brought in nursing and physical therapy and respiratory therapy and said, ‘How can you do your job without the physical space getting in your way? And even more so how can we do it so the physical space helps you do your job?”

The last phase of the project will be the construction of a therapeutic recreational center with open-air space on the sixth floor, which will primarily serve adolescent and adult behavioral health patients.

With the full spectrum of behavioral health services back at St. Joseph, it’s returning to its roots as a full-service, community hospital that continues to offer emergency, surgery, intensive care and labor and delivery services, Labarca said.

“And that really has been the heritage of ... this location,” said Labarca, who early in her career was an occupational therapist at St. Joseph before its 1995 merger with St. Francis that created Via Christi.

This story was originally published August 15, 2018 at 3:24 PM.