Operational Readiness Team Prepares Space in New Building for Day 1

Construction on the Louis and Phyllis Friedman Building is entering the final phase, which means those who will be working in the new space are in the process of ensuring it will be operational and ready to serve patients in November.

Rebecca Stover, MSN, RN, PMP, Director of Project Management at GBMC HealthCare, is leading operational readiness to prepare staff and equipment for the space. Many long hours of collaboration and intentional thought have gone into every aspect of The Promise Project.

In mid-2021, a multitude of employees, former patients, and volunteers walked through the mock patient room in the main lobby of GBMC to comment on the room design. This resulted in more than 600 pieces of feedback to review. A housekeeper identified that if you leaned over a certain way to clean behind the toilet, you hit your head on the sink. Sinks in the new room were then redesigned at an angle to accommodate and ensure Environmental Services (EVS) staff can efficiently and effectively clean the rooms.

Having input from everyone was crucial to the learning process. Similar multidisciplinary walk throughs will be replayed in October 2023, post-construction, to identify any last-minute, critical changes that need to be made before patients move in.

EVS teams have done time studies in the new space to adjust staffing needs and turnover times for cleaning the new rooms. Patient servers (pass-through storage cabinets for patient rooms) are also being analyzed by nursing, Performance Improvement & Innovation (PII), Purchasing, and Distribution teams to finalize what the needs are, what quantities of supplies are needed daily and how they might store them for efficient access.

Workflows are also in progress. For example, the PII, Transport and Critical Care teams have been preparing a new rapid response and code route, asking questions such as ‘With an emergency, what is the best way to get to the ICU? What is the most efficient and safest route?

Training and orientation will take place in October 2023 to train staff on new pieces of state-of-the-art equipment, but mostly to orient them to working in the new space—where to access equipment, what equipment goes where—ensuring staff members feel comfortable and prepared to safely care for patients on day one.

This is just one snapshot in an entire photo album of work the Operational Readiness team is doing to lead up to the grand opening.

In November, the Friedman Building will see its first patient, and the shell of the Sandra R. Berman Pavilion as well as the connecting parking structure will be completed. We will finally be able to open this building and continue the promise GBMC made to the community five decades ago.