Seattle’s Swedish Hospital opens new orthopedic surgery center

Swedish Medical Center in Seattle has opened the doors to a new, state-of-the-art orthopedic surgery center.

The $140 million Swedish Orthopedic Institute has 10 operating rooms specifically designed for orthopedic procedures.

The facility’s seven clinical floors are dedicated exclusively to orthopedics, one floor for pre-surgery services, one floor for surgery, three floors for inpatient care and two floors for physician offices.

The facility will have 84 inpatient rooms. All rooms will be private, single-patient rooms, and all have been designed to meet the needs of orthopedic patients including sliding doors, convenient handrails and lipless shower stalls that won’t trip up recovering patients.

Dr James Crutcher, chief of the Department of Orthopedics at Swedish, says the new facility will help Swedish meet the demand for orthopedic surgical services–especially knee- and hip-replacement–that is expected to grow quickly as the region’s population ages.

Dr. James Crutcher

“Northwest people are active,” says Crutcher,” and they want to continue to be be active.”

The new building will be the largest orthopedic specialty center in the region and one of the largest in the country.

Swedish already has the highest volume of orthopedic surgeries in the region, Crutcher said, performing more than 2,200 hip- and knee-replacement procedures and more than 1,800 spinal operations a year.

Specialty centers, especially those that do a large number of cases a year, tend to have better outcomes, Crutcher said.

“The more you do, the better you get at it,” he said.

Fifty-four orthopedic surgeons are affiliated with the new Institute.

The Institute is designed to provide a “one-stop shop” where patients can get all their pre- and post-operative care as well as their surgery in one place without having to move from facility to facility.

The Institute is designed so that all the relevant health-care teams can work together more easily, said Kristina Ryhn, an architect with the architectural firm NBBJ who led the design effort.

To increase efficiency and reduce medical errors, all the operating rooms and patient rooms have identical layouts so that supplies and instruments can be easily found no matter which room providers are working in, Ryhn said.

The operating rooms are larger than standard operating rooms so as to be better suited to orthopedic surgeries, Ryhn said, and all are fitted out with the latest computer and imaging technology.

Large large flat-panel screens are mounted overhead so images, such as x-rays, and other information can be easily viewed by the entire operating team.

The floor plan is laid out so that patients can be moved from the admission area to the pre-operative area, through surgery and post-operative care, and finally to their rooms quickly. “We’ll never have patients queuing’” said Heidi Aylsworth, administrative director of the Institute.

Hospital rooms are designed to make moving around, using the bathroom and getting in and out of the bed easier.

Each room is also equiped with computers for staff to chart patient progress and DVDs with flat-panel screens to display educational and entertainment programs.

Patients coming to the Institute will be enrolled in “Joint Journey” training program that starts with pre-operative patient education and continues through to post-operative rehabilitation.

Pre-operative training includes “pre-hab” such as physical training to build upper-body strength to make easier for patients to get around while they’re recovering from surgery on a knee or hip.

Each floor has a physical therapy room as well as “life skills” facilities, which includes kitchen mock-ups where patients can practice preparing meals so they will be able to cook for themselves when they get home.

There is even a “car simulator” in which patients can use to practice getting in and out of cars–a manouver that can be particularly difficult after hip or knee surgery.

The Institute is located on First Hill in Seattle at 601 Broadway between James and Cherry Streets.

To learn more:

• Visit Swedish’s page on the new Orthopedic Institute
• Visit the website for the architectural firm NBBJ which has a special section on the design of healthcare facilities.
• Watch a video on knee-replacement surgery on UWTV.
• Visit the National Library of Medicines information pages on hip and knee replacement, which include materials in Spanish.

Tags: Hip-replacement, Joint Replacement, Knee-replacement, Orthopedics, Swedish

Category: Bones, Joints & Muscles, Hospital News, Surgery, Swedish Hospital