Baton Rouge General plans to open its Ascension Neighborhood Hospital later this fall, with the second-floor primary care clinic slated for an October opening.
Meanwhile, the $30 million facility’s emergency room—along with its attached 10-bed, in-patient hospital—will open later that month and its OB/GYN clinic will be available to patients come November.
Not only does the Prairieville hospital, which broke ground in early 2019, mark BRG’s first excursion into Ascension Parish, but it’s allowed the hospital system to experiment with how it serves patients, a concept that has gained relevance in the time of COVID-19.
“We’ve excluded as many areas that are not value-added to the patient as possible,” says BRG President and CEO Edgardo Tenreiro. “Why not take away from your experience what you don’t like to see?”
For example, the neighborhood hospital won’t include any waiting rooms; instead, patients will check themselves in through an app, and then go immediately into a patient room or clinic space for their visit.
Additionally, each room will feature two entrances—one for the physician, and another for the patient on the other side of the room.
“We hope that as we refine the process, what we learn in Ascension we’ll be able to bring back to other areas of the system,” Tenreiro says.
The move comes during a time of major expansion for the hospital system. Among other BRG projects underway:
• The expansion and renovation of the Regional Burn Center, which picked up again June 29 after a three-month lapse in construction following the coronavirus outbreak. Once complete, the facility will include new inpatient suites and more beds, as well as a rooftop therapy garden, pediatric playroom and renovated outpatient rehab gym. It’s expected to wrap by early 2021.
• Construction of an outpatient operating room theater in the Center for Health, which began nearly one year ago and is scheduled for a November completion. Six outpatient surgery suites are being added to the building to accommodate demand for more capacity, marking the first outpatient-only operating room environment in BRG’s history.
• A new primary care clinic within the Americana Traditional Neighborhood Development, which Tenreiro says will further expand access to BRG for Zachary residents.
The addition of an OB/GYN unit at BRG’s Mid City Campus, made possible by BRG recently reopening its Mid City emergency room.
