Members of the Hazel Hawkins Hospitals Foundation Board of
Trustees have announced the group has met its goal of raising
$500,000 for the new emergency room at the Sunset Drive
facility.
Members of the Hazel Hawkins Hospitals Foundation Board of Trustees have announced the group has met its goal of raising $500,000 for the new emergency room at the Sunset Drive facility.
The foundation made the announcement late last week and noted how there were a total of 1,236 donations over the three-year drive. Its board voted April 8 to use the $500,000 raised to help equip the emergency room, which is set to open in the coming months.
The foundation is noting how its board agreed to purchase trauma bay booms and lights for $126,000, patient monitors for each of the 15 exam rooms for $309,000, and six specialized gernies and stretchers for $50,000, according to an announcement from the foundation.
With the ER opening soon, the monitors, booms and lights will be ordered and installed immediately, foundation President Mary Damm noted.
The foundation surpassed its $500,000 goal at the start of the month, said Leah Dowty, the organization’s director.
This summer when the new E.R. is expected to open, the hospital foundation expects to hold a special “donors-only” opening event to thank supporters who donated $100 or more to the effort.
The emergency room construction, funded with part of the $32 million Measure L approved in 2005, started in March 2008. Most recently, it was scheduled for completion by the end of last year, but there were delays at the outset because a lot of wet dirt had to be moved and there were some difficulties obtaining the needed steel.
The new E.R. is expected to have capacity to serve as many as 30,000 patients a year in 14,000 square feet of space, more than doubling the size of the existing emergency room. It will include seven private treatment rooms, three trauma bays, four negative-pressure treatment rooms for communicable diseases and a fast-track unit to speed up the visit for those with less-urgent matters.
