Erlanger executives dedicated the health system's new $50 million Erlanger East expansion on Gunbarrel Road Wednesday afternoon, touting its services to the community and the 400 new jobs it will create.
"For Erlanger to step up and do this in the East Brainerd area means a lot," Hamilton County Mayor Jim Coppinger said in praising the project.
"The facilities are unmatched," Erlanger CEO Kevin Spiegel said. "This was all done on budget and on time."
The expansion enlarges Erlanger's medical footprint in the highly populated East Brainerd area, which is also close to thousands of employees in the Enterprise South business park.
Erlanger is touting the addition as making Erlanger East a "full-service community lifestyle hospital."
The number of beds almost doubles, to 107, while the hospital also adds an intensive care unit to the emergency room, four more operating rooms, and an impressive new cardiovascular lab. Perhaps just as important for staff, patients, and their families, the expansion includes a cafeteria, something Erlanger East has lacked.
Erlanger officials said the "lifestyle" designation means the facility's focus is more on healthy people who have a temporary medical need, whether that be a pregnancy or a busted knee from jogging, as opposed to treating chronic illness such as cancer, diabetes or heart disease.
"We don't anticipate a lot of sick people here," said Joe Winick, senior vice president for planning, analytics and business development.
The hospital's major trauma unit will remain at the downtown hospital on Third Street.
Erlanger CEO Spiegel praised the patient rooms as hotel-like, with wi-fi, 42-inch TV screens, and "on-demand" dining, where patients and family members can order food from their rooms. The walls are decorated with 100 large photographs, most of nature scenes, provided by 60 local photographers.
Outdoors, there is a walking trail, a children's playground area and even a putting green.
Erlanger's lifestyle approach with East, as a place that serves different needs than its main downtown facility, differs from that taken by competitors CHI Memorial and Parkridge.
Both the 128-bed Parkridge East and CHI Memorial's Hixson hospital, with more than 75 beds, are more duplicates of the main downtown facility, offering an array of services including care for chronic illnesses.
Parkridge also has three mental health facilities and Parkridge West in Jasper, which provides emergency and out-patient services, but no beds.
CHI Memorial sees its satellite facility more as a hub for treating chronic diseases, linked to 31 primary care clinics, according to Andrew McGill, senior vice president for strategy and business development.
Having that care close to home is critical, McGill said.
"If it's not close by, a lot of people don't get health care," he said. "And then if they are not getting health care, things happen, but they put off what they need, and over time they find out they have a fairly serious condition."
While Erlanger and CHI Memorial and Parkridge don't sit down and divide up the metro area in terms of which health care system serves what community, they do try not to duplicate services, McGill said.
"We see where Erlanger has clinics and services, we want to go where they're not and where Parkridge isn't, and address the gaps, he said. "While we're competitors, and at a base level it's a business, we're also partners in taking care of the community."
Contact staff writer Steve Johnson at 423-757-6673, sjohnson@timesfreepress.com, on Twitter @stevejohnsonTFP, and on Facebook, www.facebook.com/noogahealth.