Wednesday, December 9, 2015
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Roper Northwoods: Major renovations finished, facility reopens
Roper Hospital Diagnostics and ER – Northwoods is back and better than ever after nearly a foot of flood water forced it to temporarily close.
The Northwoods facility has served the community for more than 25 years, so getting it back up and running after the early October flooding has been a top priority. Roper St. Francis Healthcare received Tuesday official licensure from the South Carolina Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation that will allow it to reopen.
Elisa Cooper, Roper St. Francis Healthcare director of property management, said she couldn’t say enough about all of the Roper St. Francis Healthcare teammates who jumped in and helped out.
“Everybody did what they needed to do,” she said. “It couldn’t have been done in this fashion without a complete team effort, and it’s their actions that are the true indicators of the type of culture that lives at Roper St. Francis Healthcare.”
The Northwoods emergency room alone serves more than 30,000 patients a year – and that number does not include all of the additional patients seen by providers in the outpatient diagnostic section, lab and CAT Scan department. Emergency medical services from both Dorchester and Berkeley counties also deliver patients to Northwoods where they are stabilized and transported as needed to other Roper St. Francis Healthcare hospitals.
For those reasons, it’s easy to understand why Northwoods facility is so vital to the region, Cooper said.
“After the rain stopped … our goals were to assess the damage, get approval for making repairs, and work to expedite re-opening as quickly as possible,” Cooper said.
Teammates from every department mobilized to help get the water out of the building, removing everything to help expedite the renovation project.
Trident Construction was hired to assess the damage and complete the needed repairs. Every area from the ground up to four feet has new sheetrock, wood studs and insulation. Flooring was replaced if it had water underneath it, and all floor cabinets and doors were replaced. The entire facility has been repainted, cleaned and sanitized from top to bottom several times.
The Northwoods facility is lucky in that equipment damage was minimal, Cooper said.
“Our CAT Scan and X-Ray machines were safe and are back up and running,” she said. “We lost some refrigeration units due to potential damage that could occur in the future, but overall we are very happy that more damage did not occur to our equipment.”
Teammates who worked at the facility were able to take paid time off or relocate within the system on their normal shifts through centralized scheduling.