Sen. Ben Cardin got an early look at the Adventist HealthCare White Oak Medical Center on Monday, touring the $400 million facility and discussing health care in the state with Adventist professionals.
The Silver Spring center will open on Aug. 25, with 100 to 150 patients moving over from Washington Adventist Hospital in Takoma Park. The new building has 180 private patient rooms, exercise stations and state-of-the-art technology, including machinery and equipment to maximize patient safety.
Adventist HealthCare White Oak is the latest edition to a group of high-tech, well-performing facilities across the state, Cardin said.
“We’re very proud of our hospital community,” Cardin said. “It’s truly unique for many reasons. We’ve met the current needs, we’ve always been strong, but we’ve now figured out a way to deal with the modern challenges of running an efficient hospital.”
He added that the health care landscape is changing, requiring several facilities to meet patient needs and house the most up-to-date equipment.
“You need to have a network in order to be efficient,” Cardin said.
Adventist Healthcare has nearly 50 facilities in the county, offering services from cancer and heart care to birthing and mental health.
The White Oak center is more than twice the size of Washington Adventist Hospital and will bring in up to 1,400 employees and 650 medical staff.
The site at 11890 Healing Way was forest land when Adventist HealthCare purchased it, said Vice President and Chief Facilities and Property Officer Geoff Morgan. Crews rescued White Oak trees from the area, which were made into benches and tables now in the facility. Walls and hallways also feature trees and leaves mirroring the nearby landscape.
“A lot of textures that you see in the facility tie back to nature,” Morgan said.
The White Oak center includes technical upgrades such as ceiling lifts to assist with patient transfer, large elevators to help move people and machinery and surgical rooms outfitted with surgical boom systems.
“What this allows us to do is really coordinate care and collaboration and focus on the high-level quality that we have been focusing on at Washington Adventist Hospital,” said Dr. James Rost, chief medical officer of Washington Adventist Hospital. “When we bring in new technology, new equipment, it really allows us to generate even better outcomes.”
The center has eight catheterization laboratories with imaging equipment to examine and treat heart conditions, and Cardin was given an up-close look at one of the rooms. The “cath labs” have surgical booms, or vertical shelving units, to eliminate clutter and assist doctors and nurses in treating patients. Each lab cost $3.5 million.
The soon-to-be replaced Washington Adventist Hospital received recognition for its heart care on Sunday, earning the American College of Cardiology’s NCDR ACTION Registry Platinum Performance Achievement Award for 2019. Physicians from the facility will now perform similar services at the White Oak center, armed with updated technology.
“If our outcomes are this good at a 100-plus-year-old building, with people that are world-class, top-notch people, how much better are they going to be when we integrate the same people and culture into a new building [with] state-of-the-art technology,” Rost said.
The facility is in the center of the White Oak Science Gateway, a project designed to initiate major redevelopment in the region.
“You have a service area which is critically important to our state,” Cardin said. “It’s a growing area, a more complicated and diverse area than ever before. You’re meeting those needs.”
Charlie Wright can be reached at charlie.wright@moco360.media