New Facilities and Services Focus on Quality Care at Johnston Health
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Providing Johnston County residents with the best health care possible encompasses more than building top-notch facilities, although Johnston Health is building them. And it requires more than offering high-quality services from first-rate physicians and medical staff, although Johnston Health offers those, too.
The final component in Johnston Health’s emphasis on total patient satisfaction is customer service, and the organization also has instituted comprehensive customer-service training for staff members in all departments.
“We’re investing a lot of money in all three areas,” says Kevin Rogols, Johnston Health president and CEO. “We want to make residents proud of the health care we have available here in Johnston County.”
To that end, Johnston Health launched a $144 million expansion plan that will deliver dynamic, top-quality health care to residents of one of the state’s fastest-growing counties. Part of that expansion program was the construction of Johnston Medical Center-Smithfield’s new 150,700-square-foot, five-story patient tower, which debuted in January 2010.
“Planning began about five years ago,” Rogols explains. “We talked to the community about what they want in their hospital, and providing that level of care in our 57-year-old hospital facility was going to be hard to do.”
“The tower actually touches on every part of the hospital and should be able to meet our needs over the next 30 to 40 years,” Rogols says. And plans for making the best use of the old hospital space are currently being considered, he says.
Concurrent with the expansion at Johnston Medical Center-Smithfield, a new, 51,000-square-foot medical center has gone up nearby in Clayton. Furniture and equipment were installed during the summer, and Johnston Medical Center-Clayton began serving patients in October 2009. The Clayton facility features an emergency department, diagnostic imaging suite, operating rooms and lab services.
By mid-2010, Johnston Health will open another facility. Hospice House, the county’s first hospice center, will be a freestanding inpatient facility with room for 16 to 18 hospice and palliative care patients. Fundraising efforts have already secured $4.5 million for the project.
“The hospice facility is going to be beautiful,” Rogols says. “It is designed to look and feel like a home, because that’s the kind of peaceful atmosphere we think our hospice-care patients deserve.
“All these facilities focus on enhancing our ability to provide high-quality care in this region,” he adds, “and to deliver it with the highest patient satisfaction.”
Story by Carol Cowan
