Tampa General Hospital is bringing healthcare to you with its new Brandon Healthplex. The 130,000 square foot facility is finally finished after two years of land acquisition, planning, design and construction. The emergency department is set to open Monday.
"We're trying to make this is easy as possible for people to be registered, if they are already in our medical records system, they can simply put their palm down on the technology and there records will be accessed." said Mark Anderson, the Senior VP at Tampa General Hospital, referring to the palm vein registration system.
Anderson says Technology and comfort were at the forefront of the new facility.
"The emergency department itself has 20 examination rooms, or 20 examination bays."
The goal is to get patients and family members into the examination rooms as quickly as possibly to cut down on wait times. Anderson took ABC Action News around the 4 story facility to showcase the services the long anticipated Healthplex offers in a par of town Anderson says is rapidly growing.
"About 20% of our patients come here but also about 20% of our employee population live here," said Anderson. "We wanted to get out into the community that we really have a strong alliance with anyway and really provide services of this quality."
The first floor is where the emergency department, full-service lab and pharmacy are located. A quick elevator ride to the second floor reveals the surgery center which holds 6 operating rooms and 13 recovering rooms.
Anderson says because the surgery center is stand alone and is not inside a hospital, according to Florida Law, patients can't stay here longer than 24 hours. He says they decided to install a bathroom and a shower fixture just in case the law changes.
For now if patients need advanced care the Healthplex has a helipad that can take them to the main campus on Davis Island. The last two floors will house physicians and a conference room for education.
