IU Health West President Updates $80M Expansion
(Image courtesy of IU Health West.)
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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowAs executives continue to receive feedback about an $80 million expansion of Indiana University Health West Hospital in Avon, newly-appointed President Art Vasquez says the project is focused on the future. Plans call for four dozen additional beds, a new operating room and additional laboratory and support service space. Vasquez tells Inside INdiana Business capacity issues at the 14-year-old Hendricks County facility have led to hundreds of patients a year being transported elsewhere.
Vasquez discussed the steps IU Health has taken to this point, including the first of three events using cardboard walls to help stakeholders visualize how facilities will be laid out. "We’re creating life-sized replicas of the actual new space to kind of understand the workflow of the units. To get the end-users involved to help decide ‘does this wall fit well, is this line of sight appropriate?’" He added "the first two-to-three months, we spent just trying to identify what are the guardrails we want to operate within. One of those guardrails is to maintain flexibility and adaptability going forward, so a lot of our expansion is around looking to the future — if things were to change, could we modify the room to accommodate a different type of patient in the future?"
IU Health announced plans for the expansion in October. Construction is slated to begin in October and it is expected to take around two years.
Indiana University Health West Hospital President Art Vasquez discussed the steps IU Health has taken to this point, including the first of three events using cardboard walls to help stakeholders visualize how facilities will be laid out.