Maggie McKay (Host): If you have surgery scheduled and your hospital is under construction, you probably have some questions. Today, COO at Jefferson Healthcare, Jake Davidson, will share a hospital construction update on the Spring of 2024. Welcome to To Your Health, a podcast from Jefferson Healthcare. I'm your host, Maggie McKay.

Great to have you here today, Jake. Would you please introduce yourself?

Jake Davidson, MHA: Yeah. Thanks, Maggie. I'm glad to be here. I'm Jake Davidson. I'm the Chief Operating Officer here at Jefferson Healthcare. I've been here, gosh, a little over six years. And I oversee some of our operations, including our medical group and our ancillaries and then our support services, which the project falls under. So, excited to be here and share a little bit about the construction project.

Host: So, Jefferson Healthcare is in the middle of a big construction project. Give us the overview.

Jake Davidson, MHA: Yeah. Absolutely. We're thrilled. You know, the building was built in 1965. And so, we decided to demolish it and build new. And so, this will allow us to both grow services. So, we're going to grow our dermatology, our OBGYN. And it also allows us to add new services. So, we'll be the first critical access in the state of Washington to have a linear accelerator, which means radiation oncology. We're going to add a state-of-the-art outpatient surgery center and then new services, including pulmonology, neurology, and ear, nose, and throat to bolster the services we provide for our community.

Host: So for those who don't know, what is the hospital trying to accomplish with their campus expansion and modernization project?

Jake Davidson, MHA: So number one, it's to ensure that our buildings are safe. The building was not up to code, and so we had to address that. But number two, really adding services to our community, bolstering services we have, and then new services so that folks don't have to travel over an hour, you know, whether it be over a bridge or mountains to get care that they need, they can get it locally.

Host: And so, the project's well underway. Tell us what's been happening over the last couple of months.

Jake Davidson, MHA: Probably the most exciting part was watching the building get demolished. Crews have been hard at that. We've had a couple road bumps. We had a little extra asbestos and a little four extra feet of concrete, but our teams worked really hard to get those out and as quick as possible. And so, the building is fully gone and we're working on site prep now. And we'll start construction shortly.

Host: And coming up, what's next in the construction process?

Jake Davidson, MHA: We are really close to the construction piece of it. And so, that means laying the foundation and, you know, a lot of the utilities and, here shortly, hopefully even start to see some walls go up.

Host: And when it comes to the patients, Jake, is there anything they need to be aware of while construction's going on?

Jake Davidson, MHA: Yeah, absolutely. So, we've done a lot. You know, this building was the backbone of our hospital. We had three other buildings that were adjoining it. And so, taking it down meant we had to create a new path through the hospital for our patients. So, we've done that. That was the biggest effect. Everything else is operational 24/7. You know, we had to keep everything going. That's been the biggest hurdle that we had to overcome. You know, here and there, we'll have parking challenges and things that we'll update our website about, but we've done very well to ensure everything's up and going and our patients feel very minimal change.

Host: What might be different about a visitor's experience if they haven't been at Jefferson Healthcare for a while?

Jake Davidson, MHA: It depends on what state we're at with the construction. For the last month, we had some parking reductions, but we did a lot of work to notify patients before they showed up. You know, we modified the parking a little bit to make it easier. And so, we're going to do as much as possible to notify patients before they get here of certain changes.

You know, I think the only other big thing going to be in place until the building's done is the new route that we have. And we have extra transporters at the front entrance to help guide you kind of where you need to go and lots of signs to help you get there as well. So, we're really trying to ensure that no patient gets confused with some of the changes in our routes.

Host: I love that, that you actually have human beings there to help other humans, right?

Jake Davidson, MHA: Yeah, it's awesome.

Host: My son always says, "Why are you asking directions? Just look at the map." And I'm like, "Because I'd rather hear it from a person," you know, especially when you're at a hospital and it's so confusing. So finally, when can we expect the project to be finished?

Jake Davidson, MHA: So, that's, you know, the light at the end of the tunnel. We will be done Summer 2025. I'm really thrilled to open up the building to have all of, you know, the new services for the community and welcome everyone into the new facility.

Host: Is there anything else you'd like to add?

Jake Davidson, MHA: This project's a great opportunity for Jefferson Healthcare, for East Jefferson County, you know, really adding more and new services to our community to ensure that patients get care that they need locally. But honestly to get care, you know, often that travel means our patients aren't getting the care that they need. And so, we're really thrilled to be able to offer that here in our backyard.

Host: Well, thank you so much for joining us today. This has been so informative and helpful, especially to the patients.

Jake Davidson, MHA: Yeah. Thanks, Maggie. It's been great.

Host: Again, that's Jake Davidson. To find out more, please visit jeffersonhealthcare.org. And if you found this podcast helpful, please share it on your social channels and check out our entire podcast library for topics of interest to you, I'm Maggie McKay. Thanks for listening to To Your Health, a podcast from Jefferson Healthcare.