LENOIR CITY, Tenn. — Loudon County is getting more crowded and local healthcare is responding to the growing needs. The U.S. Census Bureau shows the county’s population has grown 24% over the past decade.
Fort Loudoun Medical Center is getting a new addition.
“We will be building 26 new patient rooms that adjoin our current Med Surg Wing,” said Connie Martin, the chief administrative officer and president at Fort Loudoun Medical Center. “And in that wing, we will have 11 intensive care rooms that comprise our Brethren Foundation Advanced Care Wing. In this part of Tennessee, particularly Knox County and Loudon County is one of the fastest growing populations. And so the needs for health care increase, obviously as the population does. And because we want to be the trusted and valued lifelong partner for health care, it’s important for us to be able to continue to offer advanced services in our community.”
The expansion will also add private patient rooms.
“Health care to me is local and obviously it’s personal and who really wants to be in the hospital and think that they may have to be in a semi-private room,” said Martin. “And so this expansion will allow us to have all private rooms so that we can provide that service to the community in the way they would like to be cared for.”
And it’s thanks to a $5.9 million grant from the Health Resiliency Program by the Tennessee Department of Health, aimed at expanding, enhancing, investing in or improving access to health and healthcare services across the state.
“It just makes those hospitals more resilient and often with the front line fighters when it came to things like COVID that they’re gonna continue to be the front line fighters for their community to keep people healthier and live longer and even to fight disease that they encountered,” said Dr. Ralph Alvarado, the Tennessee Commissioner of Health.
Dr. Alvarado said it’s important to expand access to health care in rural communities.
“It’s a big investment and this is sometimes a once-in-a-lifetime investment, really for a lot of our hospitals that if they didn’t get this funding, a lot of these projects could not get done,” said Dr. Alvarado. “And so I know when we go meet with our officials, they’re ecstatic, they’re grateful. The communities are grateful to be able to receive those funds. And in fact, it’s been so well received that the General Assembly has allocated additional funds to continue to invest in local and particularly in rural communities as part of the Rural Healthcare Task Force.”
He said the state Department of Health is taking action to improve health care across the state to encourage Tennesseans to improve their own health.
“Our public health rankings are not great,” said Dr. Alvarado. “Tennessee is very good at a lot of things. We’re top 10 when it comes to economic rankings and taxation. People are moving here in droves. UT’s baseball team is now number one in the country, right? Football, basketball. We do really, really well at a lot of those things. We’re number 11th, in tourism, but we’re ranked 44th when it comes to overall public health outcomes. And so overall our population needs to do better in terms of improving our health.”
Bethany Raby, the Chief Nursing Officer at the hospital, shared this in an emailed statement.
“Part of the grant funding was to better position us for success in the event of another pandemic. With that in mind, this expansion will not only provide a better patient experience in our Medical Surgical unit, due to having all private patient rooms, but will also provide us additional space for patients who need to isolate for infection control reasons. In addition, the expansion moves our current Critical Care unit into the new construction area, effectively doubling the number of rooms available and allowing us the ability to care for intermediate care patients, which we have not had in the past. Finally, the Emergency Department (ED) will be able to expand into the current Critical Care space, which will increase our bed availability in the ED. This will aid in moving patients out of the ED lobby and into treatment areas more efficiently, decreasing any potential exposure time for patients waiting to be seen.”
Martin said the hospital expansion is expected to be finished by the end of 2025.
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