WHAT/
WHEN:
A special media tour is scheduled for Oregon Health & Science University's new Peter O. Kohler Pavilion Thursday, June 1, at 10 a.m. The media also are invited to attend the public grand opening Sunday, June 4, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.
The media tour will include demonstrations of the building's specially designed, patient-centered features and highly advanced technology. OHSU's chairman of surgery, chairman of anesthesiology and perioperative medicine, and chairman of cardiovascular medicine, along with neurologists, nurse managers and a bevy of clinicians will be available for interviews.
The tour also will include the atrium and upper terminus for the Portland Aerial Tram.
WHERE:
The tour will begin in the third-floor lobby Peter O. Kohler Pavilion, 808 S.W. Campus Drive, Portland. Please park in the pavilion's third-floor traffic turnaround.
TOUR:
OHSU Health System Executive Director, Peter Rapp, will greet reporters in the third-floor lobby. Retty Casey, B.S.N., R.N., director of Clinical Facilities Development and the Value Analysis Program at OHSU, will lead the building tour, which will begin in the seventh-floor Center for Women's Health. Joanna Cain, M.D., center director and chairwoman of obstetrics and gynecology, OHSU School of Medicine, will be on hand to answer questions about the center's new Breast and Women's Imaging centers, as well as the myriad features specially designed to comfort and promote the health and well-being of women.
The next stop on the tour will be the pavilion's new sixth-floor surgical suites, which are among the most technologically advanced operating rooms on the West Coast. John Hunter, M.D., Mackenzie Professor and chairman of surgery, and Jeff Kirsch, M.D., chairman of anesthesiology and perioperative medicine, OHSU School of Medicine, and nurse manager Joanne Houseworth will demonstrate how the new flat, touch-screen video monitors, lights and equipment suspended from the ceilings allow them to better maneuver, increasing efficiency and patient safety. Cameras linked to the monitors allow OHSU surgeons to instantly share their innovative surgical techniques with physicians around the world.
Saks Fifth Avenue has donated mannequins for the public grand opening. The mannequins will be dressed in scrubs and set up in the surgical suites during the media and public tours.
Next on the list is the 12th-floor Cardiac/Medical Intensive Care Unit (ICU), where SimMan, a high-fidelity, highly realistic interactive simulation mannequin, will be hooked up to monitors in one of the new ICU beds. Michael Seropian, M.D., associate professor of anesthesiology and perioperative medicine, and of pediatrics, OHSU School of Medicine, along with nurse manager Laura Magstadt will explain how OHSU has taken a leadership roll in using simulation technology across all health disciplines to improve patient safety.
After SimMan, it's on to the 11th-floor Cardiac and Vascular Intermediate Care Unit, where nurse manager Jeanean Dillard and staff will demonstrate a ventricular assist device, or VAD. VAD allows patients not eligible for a heart transplant, or patients waiting for a heart, to improve their quality of life and extend their survival. OHSU Hospital is the only center in Oregon and one of only about 70 in the country accredited by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to provide this relatively new, life-extending therapy.
Former VAD patient and heart transplant recipient Timothy Seastone will be available for interviews. Sanjiv Kaul, M.D., chairman of cardiovascular medicine, also will be present to describe how his staff provides patients with more precise and less-invasive methods for preventing, detecting and treating heart disease with such technological advances as microbubbles and myocardial contrast echocardiography.
The next unit to visit is 10th-floor Clinical Neurosciences, Otolaryngology/Head and Neck Surgery. David Spencer, M.D., assistant professor of neurology, OHSU School of Medicine, nurse manager Nancy Trumbo and staff will present the pavilion's new epilepsy monitoring rooms, where seizure specialists and specially trained nurses work closely with patients and their families in a comforting, state-of-the-art diagnostic facility.
The last stop on the tour is the ninth-floor, where the Portland Aerial Tram will provide a critical link between Marquam Hill and the South Waterfront.
BACKGROUND
OHSU's 335,000-square-foot, 11-story hospital expansion, the Peter O. Kohler Pavilion, began in spring 2003 and will open to patients June 27, 2006. The facility adds much-needed space for hospital and outpatient services, and offers the very latest in health care innovations to patients.
The Kohler Pavilion houses the Center for Women's Health (www.ohsu.edu/ohsuedu/about/transformation/pcf/cwhindex.cfm); Center for Hematologic Malignancies; 86 medical, surgical and intensive care beds, with room for 60 more down the road; expanded surgical services, including eight new state-of-the-art operating rooms (with space for four more); a sterile processing area that is nearly triple the current available space; and a 15,000-square-foot parking garage with 456 spaces.
The new building also features terraced and landscaped gardens, views of the city, multiple sitting areas, and easy access to walking trails and bike paths around the OHSU Marquam Hill Campus.
The Peter O. Kohler Pavilion is named in honor of retiring, longtime OHSU President Peter O. Kohler, M.D. In naming the building after Kohler, the OHSU board of directors recognized the innovations, spirit of service and excellence reflected in Kohler's leadership. OHSU policy requires that the board of directors find unusually meritorious reasons to name one of the university's buildings after a living person.