CaroMont Health reveals more details about hospital coming to Belmont
CaroMont Health officials hosted a presentation Tuesday to give an update on the new hospital coming to Belmont and share information about the CaroMont Health Foundation.
The info session was hosted by a panel of three women including CaroMont Senior Director of Patient Care Services Patricia “Trish” H. Goble, Senior Director of Clinical Services Janet Brightman and Director of the CaroMont Health Foundation Mary Grace Bean.
What to expect
Bean began the session walking the crowd through a slideshow with models of the hospital as a whole and photos of the completed parts of its interior.
The artist’s rendering of the campus shows a medical pavilion, parking deck, main hospital and central energy plant.
According to Bean, the medical pavilion is set to open this summer and will provide cardiovascular, pulmonary, surgery and women’s services.
The site will have a large parking deck that is, “built large enough for an expansion in the future, for another office building here, as well as to go up a couple more floors on this site,” Bean said. “The way this site is oriented, we can’t go out, but we can go up.”
Bean added that emergency responders will have separate entrances to the Emergency Department from visitors driving themselves.
The main hospital will initially be a three-story building not including the basement, and will also have a helicopter pad, Goble said.
The hospital will have three established floors when it officially opens toward the end of 2024.
The hospital’s basement level will include support services, the loading dock and a pharmacy.
Visitors will enter on the first floor, which will include the main entrance, cafeteria, lab, administrative suite and the emergency room imaging and observation.
The third floor will be a general floor, with the capability to care for patients falling anywhere from medical-surgical to lower level Intensive care unit patients.
Although it has not been included in the current build, the hospital will also have the ability to construct a fourth floor in the future.
“For our fourth floor, we’re kinda waiting to see what happens, see what shows up. Do we have a bunch of kids? Do we have you know, neuro? Really what are the needs of the community? We built this hospital so that we could take care of this community,” Goble said.
Belmont Abbey College
The hospital is renting space from Belmont Abbey College to make the new location possible.
According to Goble, CaroMont entered a 50-year lease with the college, and the hospital will have a working relationship with the school’s medical students.
The hospital will not be connected to the Abbey’s campus via roadway for safety and traffic reasons, meaning patients and visitors will not be able to access the hospital from I-85 using exit 26.
However, there will be a walking path for students to access the hospital campus by foot.
CaroMont is also working closely with the school to strengthen its medical simulation lab.
Q&A
Bringing the session to an end, the panel of women gathered to answer questions from the crowd.
Here are some of the questions asked and answers given.
Q: What’s the number of jobs forecast for this year?
A: The last count was roughly 4,600 employees, positions and providers. The new hospital will bring in an additional 250 positions in the first year.
“With the expansion of all of the offices and different services, probably, we’re looking at 5,000 or more within the community,” Bean said.
Q: Some of the services will be open in the summer, but the hospital will be opening later?
A: “The hospital will be about the second week in October,” Bean said.
Q: What level of care will you have in the ED? How will emergency personnel decide whether to go to CaroMont main or the Belmont campus?
A: The hospital will not be a designated trauma center but will be able to accommodate certain situations that require more intense care when necessary.
The helicopter will also allow the hospital to get patients to a more appropriate care center when it is not equipped to provide the care they require.
Q: Tell us more about the educational partnership with Belmont Abbey.
A: “We anticipate having students there. We will offer them every clinical experience that we can,” Goble said.
There will be limitations when it comes to behavioral health and pediatrics since those departments are housed at the Gastonia campus.
“They are our future. We were intentional when we partnered with them,” Goble said.
Q: What level of surgery will be performed at this facility, and will you have cardiac catheterization labs or any cardiac surgery?
A: “Because it’s a certificate of need state, we do not have a cath-lab there or any cardiovascular surgeries. We will have vascular but not heart surgeries,” Bean said. “We did change the design and add a little bit to pivot. We did add a new CT (Computed Tomography) scanner that is designed for advanced cardiac diagnostics.”
This machine will be able to quickly give insight into the patient’s condition and services that might be needed, she said.
Surgeries offered will be general surgeries such as gall bladders, appendix, women’s surgery and small orthopedic.
Q: How many beds will be available?
A: “We have 54 licensed beds,” Goble said. “We know, the state knows we’re growing so we have the opportunity to maximize that up to about 120 beds with a full six-floor build-out.”
This article originally appeared on The Gaston Gazette: CaroMont Health announces new developments in Belmont location
