Carson Valley Health celebrates addition

The beds in the new patient rooms at Carson Valley Health talk.

“Please don’t get up,” the bed says when someone tries to get out of it. “The care team has been called!”

On the floor at the foot of the bed are three lighted spots that nurses can check at a glance to check a patient’s status.

Nursing Manager Melissa Lynum showed off the rooms in the Intensive Care Unit as part of tours of the new 44,000-square-foot expansion conducted Sept. 25.

“All of our workstations have windows that look at the head of the bed, so we can always keep an eye on our patients,” Lynum said. “The beds have a lot of really great technology to help prevent falls.”

The talking bed is just one of those features that alert nurses if a patient tries to get up if they’re not supposed to.

The alarm is just one of several innovations included in the $40.1 million expansion expected to open in the latter half of October.

The expansion has 25 private inpatient rooms with two main hallways with all the departments coming off of them.

CEO Jeff Prater said the doors on the other side of the hallway are aligned so patients can be transported from one side to another without having to wind through the halls.

Moving patients is one of the things staff stressed during the tours.

The new MRI suite includes an additional ferrous detection system.

Should a patient have an issue while in the room, the bed detaches so it could be moved outside where they can be treated.

The expansion provides room for the hospital’s da Vinci surgical system that combines with a Trumpf bed that allows docking between the bed and the device while conducting surgery.

Registered Nurse Randy McElreath said both systems move so they can be used for specialty surgeries.

Sept. 25’s event featured ribbon cuttings for those involved in the work and a ceremony.

Dr. Robin Titus, who represents Douglas County in the Nevada Senate, told the gathering about one of her earliest experiences bringing a patient to Carson Valley back in 1984.

“I was irrigating my backyard when one of the old ranchers showed up and said ‘Titus jump in. Fulstone had a heart attack.’”

She said she jumped into a pickup truck and rode across a burning field to where the man had collapsed. Smith Valley volunteers turned up with the ambulance, but that was about it.

“I literally did CPR on him from Smith Valley to Carson Valley,” she said. “The closest resource in 1984 was the Stratton Center where you had a little emergency center. The patient did not survive.”

But that experience changed her perception of her role as a health care provider in emergency situations.

“Rural hospitals are closing across the nation,” she said. “But not in this community. In this community you’ve been willing to grow as your population grew.”

Originally built as an urgent care in 1993, the hospital offered primary care with family and internal medicine, lab facilities, physical therapy, pharmacy and medical imaging. Outpatient surgery, 24-hour emergency room and rehabilitation therapy services were added in 1995. The existing hospital opened in 2004.