Grandview COO addresses South Shelby Chamber

Members of the South Shelby Chamber of Commerce received an update on Grandview Medical Center at this month’s luncheon.

Grandview COO Drew Mason discussed the plan for patient care at Grandview Medical Center, as well as the transition between Trinity Medical Center and the new campus.

“We know that bright and shiny is going to wear off,” Mason said. “We know that all these structural things are going to go away and it’s going to come down to exactly what we focus on every single day, and that’s the patient experience and the bedside experience.”

Mason said there has been a large emphasis on patient care during training and employee town hall meetings. He played a video that has been used with employees to emphasize the message “Walk in their shoes.” The video showed the different struggles doctors, nurses, families and patients could go through.

“Certainly in our role and in our field, we no doubt sometimes get desensitized to these issues,” Mason said. “This is our reminder to folks that we’ve tried to make this emotional connection back to our employees, and ourselves and others who have shared emotional experiences.”

In connection to patient care, Mason explained the bedside interface which will be used by Grandview. The system is UpCare by ACESO, and Mason said it offers an electronic interface to provide informational material, medical records and customizable menus and exercise requirements.

“This is something we’re extremely excited about,” Mason said. “Whatever we can get our staff and our teams passionate about to use is a better communication tool.”

The new facility cost $280 million and includes a one-million-square-foot hospital, a 220,000-square-foot medical office building and a 1.25 million-square-foot parking deck. 

“We’ve got plenty of infrastructure in this facility,” Mason said. “We will be focused on cardiac service, we have six cath labs [cauterization laboratories] and two EP [electrophysiology] labs, which is a huge amount of infrastructure.”

Grandview will also venture into women’s service, Mason said, with a hybrid OR, 22 post-partum beds and eight labor, delivery and recovery (LDR) rooms.

The hospital’s position on U.S. 280, Mason said, is a benefit to the hospital and its patients.

“You all have been benefiting and really seeing and feeling and really being a part of that growth engine for years now, but we believe five of those key zip codes in the state really sit approximate to where we are,” he said.

Grandview is using a fleet of 30-40 ambulances to transition between campuses on Oct. 10. To prepare for the big day, Mason said there will be two practice runs on Sept. 15 and Sept. 24. Each patient will be monitored before, during and after the trip from Trinity to Grandview’s campus. The whole move could take up to 12 hours, Mason said.

“We are going to not discharge our patients but keep them in continuum and process with somebody who is familiar with them from A to B,” he said.

The transition will also be treated like training for a mass-casualty event by police and other community partners, Mason said.

Mason said he looks forward to the facility not being as quiet as it has been the past few weeks. He said he hopes the facility won’t be silent or empty for 50 or more years.

“We look forward to 10/10. This is 29 days away, and we are sweating out every minute of it,” Mason said. “It’s exciting, it is huge, it is everything we’ve been working on for so long. I’d be remiss if I didn’t say this community and Shelby County has been unbelievably supportive of us doing this for a very long time.”