Cooper University Hospital undergoing $30M expansion, adding 50 jobs

Cooper University Hospital is set to open two additional patient floors next week at its Roberts Pavilion. The Camden, N.J., medical center spent $30 million on construction, technology and furnishings. (Check out the accompanying photo gallery to see inside.)

The units open August 11 and will create 50 new jobs at the hospital. The project was funded through fixed-rate bonds.

One floor will be designated for advanced-care of surgery patients, and the other for heart patients from the Cooper Heart Institute. Each floor will have 30 private patient rooms and be equipped to provide intermediate monitoring, which allows for staff to provide a higher level of care without patients having to be moved to a different unit or floor.

The 10-story Roberts Pavilion opened at the Camden hospital in December 2008, with shell space set aside for future growth. Cooper still has another one-and-a-half vacant floors left.

Adrienne Kirby, president and CEO of Cooper University Healthcare, said the medical center has experienced a 6.9 percent growth in admissions during the last five years, resulting in the need to add new private patient rooms.

“Cooper’s strategy over the past few years has been to build strong patient-centered institutes for tertiary care [to handle] the complex health-care needs of surgery, trauma, cancer and cardiac patients,” Kirby said, noting tertiary-care level patients account for a large portion of the hospital’s admission growth. “We have also been focused on building relationships with patients, physicians and other health-care organizations.”

Among the features of the two new floors are:

Large murals of South Jersey landmarks throughout the hallways and waiting areas.

Spa-like bathrooms with mosaic tiles and easy-access shower in the private rooms.

Nurse work stations directly outside patients rooms.

Nurse server unit which houses supplies and linens that can be accessed from both inside or outside the room to reduce patient disturbances.

Sleeper sofas and laptop workspace for visitors.

Stephanie Connors, chief nursing officer and senior vice president of hospital operations at Cooper, said some of the changes and improvements were made based on suggestions from its nursing and physician staff and from hospital patients.

Source: Philadelphia Business Journal