HOSPITAL PROPOSES OBSTETRICS RENOVATION

Southeast Missouri Hospital has filed a certificate-of-need application for its proposed renovation of the Dennis B. Elrod, M.D., Obstetrics and Gynecology Center.

The Missouri Health Facilities Review Committee in Jefferson City last week received Southeast's certificate-of-need application, for a proposed $4.3 million renovation to its obstetrics unit.

The committee of legislators and governor appointees reviews projects that would cost $1 million or more and would have a significant impact on health care in a community. An analysis of the application is tentatively scheduled to be heard by the committee on June 5.

Southeast Missouri Hospital administrator James Wente has said he doesn't foresee obstacles to getting certificate-of-need approval since the plan calls for remodeling for a service already offered at the hospital and since the unit hasn't been remodeled since 1986.

If the certificate of need is approved in June, the renovation project could be completed by the end of 2001, hospital officials have said.

In early February the hospital's board of trustees approved a plan to convert the Elrod Center into an LDRP (labor, delivery, recover, postpartum) birthing center. With this one-room maternity stay concept, a patient's labor, delivery, recover and postpartum take place in one suite.

The $4.3 million renovation would include 15 LDRP suites, each with a private bathroom and shower, telephone, television and non-institutional furnishings, and four triage beds for a total of 19 licensed beds. Renovation plans also include two operating suites for cesarean births, a new nursery and a new neonatal intensive-care unit.