Building For a Fight With Cancer
By JO CIAVAGLIA for PhillyBurbs.com


Wednesday night, surgeon Dr. Beth DuPree told six Bucks women they have breast cancer. The next morning, she watched the first 12-bed patient wing installed in what is believed to be the nation's first hospital specializing in breast care and reconstruction.

The Comprehensive Breast Care Institute of DSI Bucks County, which DuPree helped found, is also serving as an international model for what many believe is the next innovation in healthcare construction — the prefabricated hospital.

“We're going to make a difference,” said DuPree, who will serve as medical director of the breast care portion of the hospital.

The new $38 million, 24-bed Bensalem hospital anticipates an October opening, less than one year after groundbreaking. It's a timeline unheard of with traditional healthcare construction said officials with Diversified Specialty Institutes, the Tennessee healthcare company building the hospital.

The innovative concept has captured the attention of the U.S. military, which sent representatives, including the former surgeon general of the U.S. Air Force, to Thursday's patient wing installation event at the hospital site.

“This is groundbreaking stuff,” said retired Lt. Gen. Dr. Paul K. Carlton, director of Homeland Security for the Health and Science Center at Texas A&M University. “It's going to be a worldwide impact.”

Saudi Arabian, Mongolian and Chilean governments have expressed interest in the new hospital construction technology, Carlton said. There are huge military implications for rural areas or war zones where military hospitals operate out of tents or temporary shelters, he said.

Healthcare construction costs can be exorbitant. Carlton quoted $800 per square foot in some California cities. The Department of Defense is spending $300 million on a 38-bed naval hospital to be built in Guam.

At about $260 per square foot, the multisite construction method is an affordable solution, he said.

Emergency, labs, outpatient, post-operative care unit, patient and operating rooms, imaging and radiation centers are each predesigned and pre-engineered to meet construction and engineering codes and guidelines. The unique part is the individual units can be arranged in a custom fashion.

Each 50,000-pound unit is built at an assembly plant, dismantled and shipped to the final location where it is reassembled. Each unit, which can be designed in days, is pre-equipped with plumbing, sanitation, HVAC, medical gas piping, electrical power and specialized ventilation to support surgery and airborne infection control, even shower stall handrails.

The patient wing installed Thursday should be ready for activation of electricity, medical gasses, heating and air conditioning by today. The 12,000 square-foot wing was built 14 weeks ago, and should be fully operational in less than a month, said Gary Housley, DSI vice president of sales.

The concept allows hospitals ranging in size from 12 to 120 beds and two to 12 operating rooms to be erected over a few days. When completed, the hospital is fully compliant with every state licensure regulation and with the national guidelines for Health Care Facilities Construction.

Carlton called the infrastructure of the preconstructed hospital units the best he's seen in his career.

“This is simply beautiful,” he said. “The construction, it is absolutely astounding to me.”

A little more than half of the Bensalem hospital will be built using preconstructed modular units; the rest, including the medical office building, use traditional construction, Tannenbaum said.

The hospital will include six state-of-the-art surgical suites, a two-story medical office and a 24- hour, four-bed emergency room. Its special emphasis is breast care and plastic and reconstructive surgery, but the medical staff will include plastic surgeons who will also perform elective aesthetic surgery, as well as radiation oncologists, general oncologists, noninvasive cardiology and gynecology.

In addition to the latest medical and diagnostic technology, the hospital will offer holistic healing services for patients' mind, body and spirit. The Bensalem-based Bucks County Advanced Imaging Center, which opened in January, will relocate within the hospital once it opens.

“Our process here will be to make sure women get everything they need,” DuPree said.

Cancer is the second leading cause of overall death among Bucks County residents; breast cancer was ranked second, behind prostate cancer, between 2000 and 2002, according to the state Department of Health statistics. During that period, 1,412 breast cancer cases were diagnosed on an annual average.

In her practice, DuPree says she and her partner are diagnosing between four and eight women a week with a new or reoccurring breast cancer.

DuPree hopes a one-stop approach will streamline services, so patients won't have to wait weeks to get the results of scans or tests. It also will bring an end to what she calls the care scavenger hunt that breast cancer patients face.

After receiving a cancer diagnosis, women are left to chase down an array of specialists as well as ancillary health services. But most aren't told how to get from point A to point B, DuPree said.

“You go from place, to place, to place,” she said.

In its first year, the hospital anticipates admitting at least 500 patients, treating 1,000 outpatients and performing more than 12,000 mammograms and other advanced imaging studies to detect breast cancer and related illnesses.

DuPree doesn't see the hospital as competing against other community hospitals that also provide cancer care. Rather, she sees it as a new opportunity for hospitals to raise the patient care bar.

“I'm in competition with cancer,” she said. “Cancer is the bad guy. The other hospitals are the good guys.”


Jo Ciavaglia: 215-949-4181 or jciavaglia@phillyBurbs.com. Article URL: http://www.phillyburbs.com/pb-dyn/news/111-07282006-690029.html