Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center’s new Outpatient Surgery Center has already provided services to approximately 30 patients since it opened on June 22, according to medical director Douglas Merrill. The $31 million center — which was proposed in 2007 in response to an anticipated increase in demand for outpatient surgeries — provides a separate facility for DHMC patients requiring non-emergency procedures, allowing the hospital to perform surgeries more efficiently, according to Merrill.
The Outpatient Surgery Center currently consists of four operating rooms and offers orthopedic, plastic and eye surgeries as well as adult and pediatric urological, ear, nose and throat procedures, according to Merrill. In the upcoming year, the center will likely begin expanding into the four remaining operating rooms in the newly-constructed building in Lebanon, he said.
“As you open up a space like this, it’s important to go gradually,” he said. “We’re certain that we need the space for four rooms, we probably have so much activity that it won’t be long before we open up rooms five and six.”
As the fifth and sixth operating rooms are opened, procedure offerings at the new center will expand to include general, breast and gynecological surgeries, Merrill said.
“It’s incredibly important for us to be good at what we do,” he said. “The difference between four rooms and two more rooms is 2,000 patients a year. That’s a lot busier, so we want to make sure we have our procedure down and we’re good at what we do.”
The new center has already received positive feedback from patients and their family members, according to Merrill.
“We were able to get several patients through in a very efficient fashion,” Merrill said. “One lady who had always gotten sick after surgery didn’t get sick, so she was pretty darn excited. She came to see us the next day after she had an omelet for breakfast.”
The center increases the overall efficiency of DHMC, according to Merrill, because the additional space allows surgeons to focus on specific types of procedures. The center also benefits from having a more “predictable” surgery schedule since emergency surgeries are performed at a different site, Merrill said.
“It’s very convenient for a patient to not have to come in until an hour ahead of time and know when the procedure will start and when it will finish,” Merrill said.
Although the new center — which was funded by the sale of bonds — was not created in response to the economic downturn, its operation will increase efficiency and help reduce the strain from recent budget cuts, according to Merrill.
“The more efficient we are, the less money we spend,” Merrill said.
Although surgeons are expected to move back and forth between the center and DHMC, approximately 54 employees from DHMC have been relocated to work at the new center permanently, according to Merrill. Approximately “four or five” employees were appointed externally, Merrill said.
DHMC has also closed two of its 28 operating rooms since all outpatient surgeries now take place in the new center, according to Merrill. The two operating rooms will be renovated and reopened in the “next couple of years,” he said.
Although there were initial concerns that the Outpatient Surgery Center would adversely affect the operations of local hospitals, the new center does not negatively impact other Upper Valley surgery centers, Susan Bryant, senior director of community affairs at New London Hospital, said.
“We don’t think it will affect our numbers,” Bryant said. “We’re very pleased that patients who would go to [DHMC] won’t be bumped. It probably enhances services for the whole area and we’re very much in favor of it.”
Patients will continue to seek out the physicians who deliver the best care and not the specific facility, Harry Dorman, president of Alice Peck Day Memorial Hospital, said.
“I know that DHMC did not build that facility in order to go into competition with other hospitals,” Dorman said. “They did not want to take business away from other hospitals. They said the reason for this was to free up other operating rooms.”