Cape's hospitals grow to meet medical needs

Cape Girardeau's two hospitals continue to find ways to offer bigger and better ways to provide first-rate health care for the region.

St. Francis Medical Center made two major announcements earlier this year. In January, it announced its new partnership with doctors in Poplar Bluff, Mo., to build a medical campus that eventually is expected to include a 50-bed hospital. And in March the medical center announced plans for a $7.5 million health and fitness center to be added to the existing hospital's main campus.

Both of these announcements at St. Francis came on the heels of the medical center's re-entry last year into obstetrics with the opening in September of a birthing center and neonatal care unit.

The latest hospital news is from Southeast Missouri Hospital. This month, the hospital is introducing its redesigned and refurbished Elrod Obstetrics and Gynecology Center with a series of special events.

The center is complete after 18 months of construction. The hospital took existing space and invested $4.3 million, turning the area into a showplace for the latest services for labor, delivery, recovery. Mothers can go through the entire process of having a baby all in the same comfortable room, and there's plenty of space for visitors who want to see the new babies.

The mothers who gave birth at the hospital during the construction period are being invited back Sunday for a tour of the area and a celebration of the hospital's accomplishment. That's a week after the nursery areas of the hospital were dedicated to Dr. Jesse Ramsey, a pediatrician who devoted his life to care of very sick and very healthy babies alike.

One of Southeast's nurseries is a neonatal intensive care unit, which features more space and updated technology. The other is a nursery for babies who will be there only a short time before they go home with their parents.

Southeast Missouri Hospital also has just announced a $16 million expansion project that will increase its number of private rooms from 39 to 107. Hospital officials heard the same thing repeatedly from patients: They wanted more privacy. So Southeast intends to accommodate that request.

Construction on the new floors is scheduled to begin in July. The whole project is to be completed in the summer of 2005. Areas targeted for expansion are surgical progressive care, medical progressive care, joint replacement center/orthopedics surgical, neurology and oncology.

It is encouraging to see Southeast and St. Francis in such a forward-thinking mode. The two hospitals are the heart of Cape Girardeau's well-deserved reputation as the regional center for health care.