By Sam Baker, KERA Morning Edition Host
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/kera/local-kera-776301.mp3
Dallas, TX –
It's primary function is to care for the poor and uninsured, but Parkland Hospital impacts the community as a whole. The hospital handles more than 70 percent of the major trauma cases in Dallas County, and it has the region's only burn center. CEO Dr. Ron Anderson says it's also the teaching hospital for the neighboring University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.
Anderson: 55 percent of the time in Dallas, if you give us the name of a physician, that person trained at our campus.
But that campus was built in 1954. It's now too small to accommodate Dallas County's growing population or 21st century technology. That becomes clear when you walk through sections of Parkland's Neo-Natal ICU with Associate Director Anne Tudhope.
Tudhope: There's no room for parents to sit. If you look at in between these two beds, this is the only place for a mom to sit. And then the nurse has to get in and answer alarms and may have to do something with the baby or give medications. So we have to constantly move mom out of the way, which doesn't make for a family friendly environment and doesn't make the mom feel comfortable and get any uninterrupted time with her baby.
Maurine Dickey: Also, the hospital was built with 12-foot ceilings. Now hospitals have to have at least 15-foot ceilings.
Dallas County Commissioner Maurine Dickey used to chair the Parkland Hospital board.
Dickey: Because under the ceilings, the floor, the wall, is all kinds of cabling for technical things that are needed for infectious disease control, air flow, electrical and plumbing amenities that can't even be put into a 12-foot high ceiling. So the hospital really is not able to be retrofitted so it could pass standards.
So after a year and a half long study, a blue ribbon committee decided to construct a new hospital with 862 beds, 28 percent more than Parkland has now. The bond package also includes an outpatient center next to the hospital, office buildings and improved parking. Total cost: about $1.3 billion. Taxpayers would cover about 60 percent. The rest will come from the hospital's cash reserves and donations. The owner of a $100,000 home would pay about $20 per year in 2010, eventually increasing over time to $35.
Maurine Dickey and the rest of the Dallas County Commissioners Court support the bond package. That's a major turnaround from recent years when members like Kenneth Mayfield were at odds with Parkland over how it managed money and resources. He says the hospital's now debt-free and fiscally responsible.
Mayfield: They've got a better business attitude. They saw they needed to tighten up some of their policies and procedures there to make sure it wasn't easy to come out and get the benefits of Parkland without having insurance or paying some, if not all, of the cost.
But would a new hospital address a major complaint about the current one - lengthy waiting time in the emergency room? That complaint drew attention again when former restauranteur Michael Herrera died September 20 in the Parkland ER. He collapsed in an examination room after waiting 19 hours for treatment for an ongoing hernia.
Anderson: During the time he came in there were 17 critical patients being prepared to go upstairs and 20 to 30 patients were down there staying in the emergency room who had already been admitted because there were no beds upstairs. The average wait during that day for everybody was 14 hours because of the lack of beds upstairs.
Hospital CEO Ron Anderson says a new hospital with a greater number of beds will help, but more beds would not have solved the Herrera problem.
Anderson: The thing I think we have to do in those cases where people have been waiting a long time is reassess them periodically as we go along, and those things are trying to be accomplished as well because people's condition might change after the initial triage. But, uh, I don't want to use that case as an excuse and say that, you know, we get a new hospital, that fixes it. A new hospital is six years away. We have to fix those kinds of problems now.
If voters say no to a new building, Parkland continues unchanged. A growing population may mean other hospitals have to take on more indigent care. But Anderson doesn't think it will come to that. There's no organized opposition to the bond package. County commissioners are behind it, and the effort to raise charitable donations appears on track to reach its $150 million goal.
Anderson: We've seen a positive response. I think people know it's time. We have a 1954 building that has served us extremely well, but because of growth in population and demand, it can't take us into the future. They can see that.
Election day is November 4.