Excela Frick campus dubbed ‘Excela Square at Frick’ in 2017
Submitted photo
Excela Health Hospital in Mount Pleasant
submitted photo
In September, a new first floor cafe was created at Excela Frick Hospital in Mount Pleasant.
Excela Frick Hospital has undergone several renovations in the last couple of years to continue to make the campus a competing and viable option for all encompassing health care for the surrounding communities.
On Sept. 18, 2017, Excela Health held a formal open house for the latest phase of improvements at the Frick Hospital Campus.
“At that event, the health system unveiled the Empathy Collection, a series of photographs and audio clips that is on display in the expanded lobby, a time capsule from the 1960s was reviewed and a new time capsule placed,” said Spokeswoman Robin Jennings.
On that occasion the entire campus was dubbed Excela Square at Frick, reflecting the creation of a hybrid medical mall, which has all the features of a premier outpatient center and includes emergency services and inpatient hospital care.
Major renovations began five years ago with the remodeling of the hospital’s third-floor patient rooms that include 30-plus beds, which serve both medical/surgical patients and critical care patients
Jennings said the next move was to remodel the Emergency Department to create a separate entrance for EMS personnel and to upgrade the registration/triage area for flow and added security.
Laboratory and imaging areas, as well as the Advanced Sleep Center were enhanced and a second Advanced Wound Center was added to the campus.
Jennings said they also partnered with Gateway Rehabilitation, opening the campus up to Gateway’s drug and alcohol inpatient unit in Westmoreland County. This year, that unit will be expanded through grant funding obtained by Gateway.
In Phase II of the hospital campus project that was completed in September of last year, Jennings said they created a new first floor café and remodeled the entrance and lobby, creating a new secondary entrance.
“We also relocated the chapel and healing garden, in cooperation with Compassionate Friends and the Frick Hospital Foundation,” said Jennings.
Excela officials will begin to look to Phase III in the months ahead, as they bring more physicians onto the campus so that primary care doctors and specialists can work side by side.
“It’s part of creating that patient centered medical home like we have a Excela Square at Norwin and Excela Square at Latrobe, where patients have access to the services they need most often,” said Jennings.
Over the life of the project Excela health will invest nearly $20 million in the campus.
Frick Hospital is designated a Primary Stroke Center and was just recertified as such, and it also holds a Silver Award level distinction in the Donate Life Challenge from the Hospital and Health System Association of Pennsylvania for organ donor awareness activities.
“In 2018 we will be holding a number of physician seminars at Excela Square at Frick,” Jennings said, adding that the next one is slated for April 28 on the topic of Hernia Education and Screening with Dr. John Domit, a member of Excela Health Surgical Specialists.
“Later this spring we expect to open an Advanced Lung Center on the Frick Campus, with Dr. Michael Szwerc seeing patients at the campus,” she added. “We will also be holding educational events surrounding this expansion of service.”