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New Unit Coming to Hospital in Tarpon Springs
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Published: September 8, 2007
TARPON SPRINGS, Fla. - TARPON SPRINGS, Fla. - Next month Helen Ellis Memorial Hospital will open a Progressive Care Unit, a half-way house of sorts for cardiac patients.
The PCU will be the place where heart attack sufferers, and patients with other serious cardiovascular ailments, can recuperate and be monitored by highly skilled nurses after spending time in the hospital's Intensive Care Unit.
Normally, the PCU will be one step away from discharge.
The PCU opening is tentatively set for Oct. 1. The date coincides with the hospital's busiest season, which usually hits as winter rolls in, carrying with it a tide of seasonal – mostly older – refugees from colder climes.
Currently, cardiac surgery patients who pass the critical postoperative stage and are well on the way to recovery, are sent to the Telemetry Unit. But beds there are often "maxed out" says Paula Feit, nurse manager at the HEMH. That is especially true in the busy season, she says.
In addition, some patients require greater care and stricter monitoring than can be obtained in the TU, Feit added.
Feit describes the PCU as "a step-down ICU."
"We are expanding cardiac services to the community, looking to have open heart surgery in the future, so it gives us more beds and a place where we can recuperate them with better trained nurses than on the floor," she says.
"It will make the whole care of a cardiac patient more efficient," according to HEMH spokesman, Jerry Touchton.
Other future developments at the hospital include a medical office building and a 400-space parking garage.
This is being proposed by developers A.G. Armstrong under a joint arrangement with HEMH administrators.
Helen Ellis Memorial is part of the Tampa-based University Community Hospital system.
The plans are now in permitting stage, but if approved, the development "will result in additional medical services and hassle-free parking to the people of Tarpon Springs," according to the hospital's chief executive officer, Don Evans.
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