April 2019 Project Update:
Family Birth and Children’s Center

The new Family Birth and Children’s Center will be priceless to each family who needs the services offered here. We currently are in the planning stage where there isn’t much to see, but a lot of hard work is taking place behind the scenes. Read on to learn what’s new:

What We’ve Accomplished

We have teams of clinical and non-clinical people heavily focused on finalizing plans for the Family Birth and Children’s Center. Here are some examples of the behind-the-scenes groundwork that is being done:

• We’ve toured seven different hospitals to understand what is working best and how we can incorporate successful ideas into our planning, process, and execution.
• We’ve consulted with experts in women’s and children’s services.
• We’ve created cardboard room mock-ups to make decisions relating to patient room size and general room layout.
• We’ve collaborated with both our design team and the Family Advisory Council (consisting of community members) to help identify spaces that are absolutely essential, important, ordinary, or not desirable to be close to one another.
• We’ve developed a conceptual floor plan, evaluated it and made adjustments, and are now working on a detailed schematic design.

Because of our extensive pre-planning, we are ahead of schedule—we have a very engaged and excited team working together.

Family Integrated Care Model

Expanded space and private rooms in the new center will allow us to adopt the Family Integrated Care Model. This model ensures that parents are included in all aspects of their child’s care with support from the health care team.

Family Integrated Care means parents go beyond observing care and become integral in delivering care and making decisions. This model has lasting benefits for the child and the parents. Consider the following:

• When parents are directly involved in care, infants grow faster and have less stress.
• Infants spend fewer days in the NICU and are less likely to be readmitted.
• Infants are more likely to be breastfed and for a longer time.
• Parents have reduced anxiety, increased confidence, and gain skills.
• Parents experience increased readiness for the transition to home.
• The medical team and parents build a stronger relationship.
• Staff feels more confident about the parents’ abilities, facilitating the families return to home as soon as possible.

$2.1 Million to Go

Our $36 million comprehensive capital campaign to help fund this and many other projects will run through June 2020. The Family Birth and Children’s Center accounts for $10 million of the $36 million campaign. To date we have raised $7.9 million for this project.

While that is fantastic news, we often find that the final dollars needed for any project are the most difficult to secure, so we continue to work diligently to raise the remaining dollars needed.

For More Information

Learn more about this campaign for Munson Medical Center’s largest expansion.

If you would like more information, please contact Debra Henderson, Director, Munson Healthcare Foundations, at 231-935-7668 or dhenderson@mhc.net.