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NORMAN — Norman Regional Health System is less than two weeks away from starting its next chapter with the opening of the expanded HealthPlex.
Effective July 29, the HealthPlex, located at 3300 Healthplex Pkwy just off Interstate 35, will be called Norman Regional Hospital.
The current hospital, 901 N. Porter Ave., will move its acute care, including emergency department, intensive care unit, operating rooms and inpatient care, to the current 700,000-square-foot campus. It will become the flagship hospital and headquarters of NRHS.
The expansion, part of the system’s $300 million Inspire Health Strategic Plan, includes a 96-bed intensive care tower, an outpatient clinic and a larger emergency department with more rooms.
There is also new technology to help patients walk again after an event such as a stroke or spinal cord injury. Norman Regional is the first in Oklahoma to offer a ZeroG Gait and Balance System.
Erin Barnhart, executive director of the Norman Regional Health Foundation, said the ZeroG system was funded by their $4 million Equipped For Tomorrow campaign. Barnhart said donors heard from both therapists and patients who used the system in other states and knew the results were excellent.
NRHS Physical Therapist Ben Vandaveer manages the inpatient rehabilitation unit at Norman Regional. There are several overhead harness systems on the market, but Vandaveer said Zero G is the first and only system for adult use in Oklahoma. He said the dynamics of the system allow patients to safely walk on the ground without the risk of falling, reducing the risk of injury to both the patient and staff.
“It can facilitate. It can provide resistance. It can provide challenges to maintain balance by suddenly and unexpectedly pulling patients in certain directions, and it really gives us a lot of tools,” Vandaveer said.
According to Vandaveer, research shows that fear of falling increases the risk of an actual fall.
“If we can get these patients to exercise safely in an upright position for longer, in a supported position that they feel confident in, we get functional gains and we can get our patients to exercise longer and harder,” Vandaveer said. And the ultimate goal is to get them home safer and faster.”
Mike Bumgarner, who pioneered the ZeroG system at Norman Regional, attests to the importance of feeling stable and supported during gait rehabilitation. He said there’s always a fear of falling, even if you have a belt to support you, but ZeroG, with its multiple harnesses, takes that worry away.
“This machine gives you the ability to strap a person in so that psychologically you feel very safe, which means you’re able to take charge and challenge and potentially take risks that you normally wouldn’t take,” Bumgarner said. “The fear of falling can go away very quickly when you’re strapped in.”
Hospital staff got a chance to get used to the system during a demonstration Wednesday. And that’s just one of the highlights of a busy month for the NRHS, which is holding an open house at the HealthPlex from 9 a.m. to noon on Saturday.
A name change coincides with the move. HealthPlex becomes Norman Regional Hospital as the Porter campus transitions to its next phase with a focus on outpatient services.
The majority of the Inspire Health project took place at the HealthPlex campus, which originally opened in 2009.
NRHS CEO Richie Splitt said the strategic plan included about 1 million square feet of construction and renovations in total. For comparison, Splitt said the Omni Hotel and Events Center next door in downtown Oklahoma City is just over 1 million square feet.
Next week, Splitt will move inpatients from the Porter Avenue campus to the new Norman Regional Hospital.
“That’s one ambulance at a time, one patient at a time, every five minutes until we get them all here,” Splitt said. “July 28th, that’s what happens, and the next day, Monday, July 29th, we’re open.”
Splitt called the renovation of the Porter Avenue campus, which opened in 1946 as a community hospital, a redevelopment.
Oncology services will remain there for the next year. NRHS is opening an urgent care center on the Porter campus. A renovated community events training center is nearing completion, Splitt said. There is also a new Behavioral Health Center on that campus with 48 adult psychiatric beds.
Splitt said they will eventually demolish the former hospital on Porter to make way for future developments at the Porter Health Village.
“We’re transforming it from an acute care inpatient setting to an outpatient focus on health and wellness, so you don’t have to come to the hospital initially,” Splitt said. “We have primary care on that campus, and specialty care is also available, as well as urgent care and room for future development as we move forward.”
Splitt stressed that the move was “transformative” for both patients and employees, whom he colloquially calls “healers.”
“It’s a place where they can really thrive, so they’re going to use powerful tools like ZeroG to do the work that they do, to help with the healing process for our patients,” Splitt said. “It’s the caring hearts and capable hands of each of them that really (makes this work). The other side of that is the excitement and optimism that we all have to open this facility in less than two weeks, because it’s really a new era of health care, not just for Norman, but for the entire region.”
