The Lebanon VA Medical Center held a ribbon cutting ceremony on Tuesday morning for the hospital’s new Medical-Surgical Unit.
The new unit features 16 private rooms and will ultimately service more than 1,000 patients per year. Each room has a private bathroom with walk-in shower.
The rooms also have new state-of-the-art safe patient handling equipment. This system of a rails attached to the ceiling allows for patients to be moved safely from their hospital bed to a chair or the bathroom. This system improves safety for patients, but also for staff, as back-injuries can be common for nurses when trying to move patient without systems like this in place.
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Before the renovation, these rooms were double occupancy. Now, patients are offered a more comfortable experience in these private rooms that don’t have the sterile feel of more typical hospital rooms.
Six of the rooms are also equipped with telemetry monitoring capabilities.
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The ribbon cutting ceremony was attended by Pennsylvania House Representatives Frank Ryan and Russ Diamond, who offered remarks and presented a certificate to Director of Patient Services Margaret G. Wilson.
Also in attendance were county commissioners Bob Phillips, Bill Ames, and Jo Ellen Litz who also presented Wilson with a certificate to mark the opening of the new unit.
Patients will be moved into the new unit starting tomorrow.
The Lebanon VAMC services 45,000 veterans each year and 28% of staff members are veterans themselves.