LIMA, Ohio (WLIO) — Mercy Health-St. Rita’s Medical Center has opened its newly renovated pediatric care unit, marking the end of a nearly $6 million project aimed at improving care for the hospital’s youngest patients.
The updated unit has renovated one of the oldest parts of the hospital and adds more rooms to meet the need for pediatric services in the 11 county region that the medical center serves. It also features a centralized nursing station, which hospital officials say will enhance the level of care.
“Beyond just the sense of pride and kind of the heart that goes into walking into the building every day, walking into a unit, it is that sense of pride and compassion when you're taking care of kiddos on these units. It's something that I can't even actually put to words of what this will mean, not just for nurses, our techs, our EVS staff that has the privilege of working on a brand new unit like this,” said Lindsey Paul, chief nursing officer at Mercy Health-St. Rita’s.
The pediatric renovation is one component of a $33 million overhaul of the hospital’s “E” building, which also included new Behavioral Health and Neurosciences Units, as well as modernized patient rooms designed for today’s medical needs.
“Over the years, we see the amount of equipment that is needed within a room, and also the number of people that come and support a patient while they're here in the hospital has grown and so rooms of the past oftentimes aren't quite spacious enough. We need better square footage in those rooms to be able to accommodate the size of the bed, the equipment and the loved ones who are there with the patients,” said Ronda Lehman, president of Mercy Health-St. Rita’s.
Patients are expected to move into the new pediatric unit on Tuesday.
