Architects Selected for Hospital Remodel

DAYTON – Columbia County Health System leaders have selected an architect team for the planned $5.5 million Dayton General Hospital upgrade, they announced last week.

Two architects responded to the hospital district’s request for letters of interest last month, according to Chief Operations Officer Shane McGuire. Both were invited to the bidding process with RFQ (request for quotation).

Rather than respond individually, the two architects decided on their own to come back to the table as partners, McGuire said. CCHS leaders accepted the idea. Blue Room Architecture & Design, out of Spokane, will work with John Decker, a hospital expert, to plan the comprehensive remodel of the hospital.

Interim CEO Jon Smiley said last Thursday that he had the draft contract on his desk and would be forwarding it to attorney Kim Boggs for final approval.

Hiring an architectural team was the first big step in seeing the hospital project come to fruition. The professionals will base their designs on a report received earlier this year by Stroudwater Associates, contracted by the health system to help determine the community’s hospital needs after voters approved a $5.5 million bond levy last fall to improve Dayton General.

Between now and the end of the year, the architects will produce draft documents for the board of directors to approve, McGuire said. Building plans will be ready after the first of next year. Construction should start in April, he said.

The board should have schematics to approve at its September meeting, Smiley added. The drawings and specifications will go to the state hospital board for their required approval between September and November.

More than any other aspect of the project, timing is the most critical to determine, Smiley told the board.

“I have to be very frank,” Smiley told the board. “It’s a messy little remodel. A lot of people won’t appreciate it while you’re doing it. It’s like remodeling a kitchen. You have to keep using it while the work is going on. It is important that we look at phasing it so no one department is not operating while the construction is going on.”

Smiley and McGuire have estimated it will take 18 months to complete the project. Planned changes do not require that any external building take place – other than the addition of a physical therapy pool – but the changes inside could be dramatic.

Stroudwater’s report urged the relocation of emergency services to the front of the facility, where general admitting is now. Outpatient therapies would be consolidated and organized into the annex between DGH and Booker Rest Home.

Acute care and ancillary services would join with emergency at the front of the building to consolidate critical care. And administrative offices would move to inside the hospital facility and be co-located with other support services.

“The priority of each phase of the project will be guided by the fact that we have to have places to move people,” McGuire said. Board member Jim Kime was adamant, as he has been at each meeting, that the project address those issues promised to the voters – an expanded physical therapy department and addition of a PT pool. McGuire assured him that the architects are aware of the priority that should be given to those areas.