Hospital Makeovers Near Completion

With major improvements at St. Joseph's Community Hospital of West Bend in progress since 1996, we're just a few months from concluding another project.

This is the latest in a series of assignments that began with the relocation of a 23-bed subacute care service from Washington County Samaritan Health Center. To accommodate the move, we completed a $1.2 million renovation of the east wing's third floor.

The present work commenced last June and comprises $2.5 million of improvements to the west wing's second and third floor Nursing Units, encompassing 32,000 square feet of space.

Approximately 50 patient rooms are being remodeled with new finishes and functions, including new doors, flooring, lighting and electrical service, medical gas outlets and millwork. Some rooms are being turned into flexible space. With an emphasis on providing patients with private rooms whenever possible, sliding partitions allow some rooms to be converted to semi-private use when needed.

The wing has remained occupied throughout the construction, requiring special precautions to minimize noise, dust, traffic and disruption of normal activities.

One of the hospital's goals was to enlarge as many patient rooms as possible, and to make them more homelike, comfortable, and aesthetically attractive to the patients and their visitors.

St. Joseph's Executive Director, Greg Burns, said, "We’ve been pleased both with the design work by Plunkett Raysich and with the work performed by Beyer Construction. In terms of the on-site supervision, Rick Buth has done a very nice job coordinating all the things that are required for construction while the hospital is occupied and functioning."

In addition to improvements to the patient rooms, the project includes two new nurses' stations on each floor, plus a nurse manager's office, dictation rooms, a staff lounge, work rooms and storage areas.

In a separate assignment, we rebuilt an east wing entrance which had been closed and sealed off since 1974. It originally served the wing's second floor, but with re-grading of the exterior area it now provides first floor access.