Community tries to bring feeling of home with hospital renovation in Munster

BY SUSAN ERLER, Times of Northwest Indiana 
serler@nwitimes.com

MUNSTER | The Community Hospital expects to beef up its work force to staff a newly enlarged emergency department and additional private rooms, a hospital spokeswoman said Tuesday.

On Monday, the hospital opened a newly designed inpatient cancer unit with all private rooms, and a $32 million redesigned emergency department is set to open in mid-February.

"By the end of the second quarter, we expect the project will have created 50 new jobs," Community Hospital spokeswoman Mylinda Cane said.

Most of the new hires will be nurses and support staff, including certified nurse assistants and housekeepers, Cane said.

Some experienced nurses will transfer to fill new positions, leaving openings for recent college graduates, she added.

"We're getting a lot of interest," she said. "In a few cases, we have offered positions to people from outside the area who are relocating to take these new positions."

The oncology unit houses 26 private patient rooms in a setting designed to be soothing and organic, hospital officials said.

Round-the-clock family visits are permitted on the unit, allowing "patients to be close to their family to cope with a difficult diagnosis," hospital administrator Donald Fesko said.

As part of the renovation project, the outpatient oncology unit moved from the second floor to the fifth floor of the hospital west pavilion.

The second floor will be remodeled and opened later this summer as a new nursing unit with all private rooms for patients requiring monitoring for a variety of conditions, hospital officials said. The pavilion sixth floor, also housing private rooms, is expected to open by early March.

An outpatient oncology unit has been relocated to the third floor from the second floor.

The redesigned emergency department, housed in a 52,000-square-foot, two-story pavilion at the front of the west pavilion facing Calumet Avenue, is set to open Feb. 16.

At twice the size of the hospital's existing ER, the new emergency department will likely require additional staff, Cane said.

Community Hospital plans to unveil the new emergency department and some of the completed private rooms at a public open house from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. Feb. 8.