The Watkins Center for Emergency and Acute Care
The Watkins Center is a 72,000 square foot addition to the Heywood Hospital campus that opened in December of 2010. The Center houses a new 20-bed emergency center, a 25-bed medical surgical floor called Watkins II, a 19-bed telemetry and medical surgical floor called Watkins I, and a new 6-bed Intensive Care Unit (ICU), known as the Robinson-Broadhurst ICU.
The Watkins Center is named for the Watkins Family Foundation, who made a gift of $7 million to the project in honor of Chris and Karen Watkins. The project cost $37.6 million, and was designed by TRO Jung/Brannen and built by the William A. Berry and Son Company, a division of Suffolk Construction.
The new Watkins Emergency Department has 20 beds, state of the art monitoring equipment and designated psychiatric safer rooms. The new inpatient floors have all private rooms with a new nurse call system and features to enhance the comfort of family members, such as daybeds which convert to comfortable sleepers and special family support areas.
Directly adjacent to the new ED is the Garrison CT Suite, with two CT Machines -- a new 32-Slice CT and a 64-slice CT, which enables the Hospital to perform non-invasive cardiac testing, in addition to other CT exams. The Garrison CT Suite is named for James Garrison and the Garrison Family. All outpatients requiring CT exams will come to the Garrison CT Suite. The Garrison CT Suite also has an X-Ray Room and an Ultrasound Room primarily for use with ED patients.
To help fund the Watkins Center project, Heywood Hospital has undertaken the Next Century Campaign to raise $10 million dollars, under the leadership of Dr. James A. Faust. For more information on the project and the Next Century Campaign, go to the Support Heywood section of website.
New eICU® - State-of-the-Art Technology for Enhanced Critical Care
Our Intensive Care Unit (ICU) now offers the state-of-the-art eICU Program, providing an enhanced level of care for our most critcally ill patients. Part of the eICU Program offered through UMass Memorial Medical Center, this round-the-clock service supplements the care provided by Heywood’s own highly trained critical care team.
This next generation technology is providing a more intense level of critical care for patients admitted to the 6-bed Robinson-Broadhurst ICU, located in the Watkins Center. Patients in the ICU are linked to critical care physicians at a central monitoring station 24-hours-a-day using enhanced voice, data and video capabilities. This real-time monitoring helps to identify a potentially dangerous trend in a patient's condition in the earliest stages, allowing the eICU physician to assist the hospital's critical care team in initiating treatment before the condition worsens.
From the eICU Support Center located at UMass Memorial Medical Center, an intensivist continuously monitors each Heywood Hospital ICU patient's vital signs, including blood pressure, oxygen saturation and heart rate on computer screens. Other patient information readily available includes the approved care plan, physician and nursing notes, current medications, radiology images and recent test results. Any abnormality in a patient's vital signs is instantly sent over the eICU program's secure, high-speed data lines, prompting the intensivist to closely examine the situation.
The new eICU system also includes high-resolution video cameras with enhanced audio capabilities that can be used by UMass Memorial intensivists to assess a patient's condition in the event of rapid changes. When activated, this bedside system allows the intensivist to communicate with both the patient and healthcare providers to better assess and provide feedback on the patient’s condition.
In addition to providing valuable support during emergency situations, eICU intensivists also enhance a patient's ongoing care through collaboration with the patient's own physician, consulting on current medical status, treatment options and providing, continuous patient monitoring and assessment. The eICU technology, and the enhanced level of care it provides, is expected to allow many patients who formally may have required out-of-town transfers to receive their care close to home.
