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By Sara Gilgore – Staff Reporter, Washington Business Journal Suburban Hospital is bursting at the seams no more. The Bethesda community hospital, owned by Johns Hopkins Medicine, is preparing to expand into its newly completed building in March — a decade after the project was first floated and more than four since Suburban’s last major construction in 1979. The $270 million expansion was funded by a combination of savings, borrowed funds and philanthropy — about $65 million in donor dollars, according to Suburban officials. And it means a few major changes for the Montgomery County trauma center, which has been about one-third undersized for years, according to President Jacky Schultz. The new north building connects to the original hospital facility and nearly doubles its footprint. That, and a new parking garage that recently delivered, bring an additional 300,000 square feet to the campus. The hospital will continue to have 228 beds, 108 of which will be in private patient rooms. Until now, all beds have been in rooms that are semi-private, meaning patients often have roommates. That has caused delays in care in instances where patients can’t share a room because of an infection control issue, among other reasons, hospital officials say. “So simply going to all-private is going to mean that more beds are going to be online all the time,” Schultz said. The addition also brings much-needed medical office space to the property for specialists working on-site, a family resource center, and conference rooms for doctors to meet with patients. Then there’s a new surgical unit with operating and procedure rooms, and a medical unit with the ability to convert to an intensive care unit. The fourth floor also has a separate ventilation system, to prevent the spread of a pandemic like the flu. Suburban’s existing operating rooms won’t be used once the new building is operational, but will be available to be used for “what we might need next,” Schultz said. They comprise less than 20,000 square feet. The new building has a dedicated driveway entrance for emergency and trauma patients with a direct artery to the operator rooms. It includes high-tech features, such as a tracker board in the OR waiting room and cafe, so family members can monitor the progress of their loved ones; and an electronic communications screen in patient rooms for medical records — an upgrade from the white boards medical teams currently use. The patient rooms themselves were also conceived with flow in mind, accounting for equipment needs and other spatial considerations. Patients, families and staff participated in the hospital's design process, introducing an entirely new setup compared to the existing hospital building, Schultz said. That process accounted for small details: non-glossy floors (glossy looks clean, but the reflection can make visibility tough for some patients), color-coded signage and wayfinding denote each level, and hydration stations for easy access to water. Suburban also brought in a team of consultants to help it be forward-looking, because “we don’t want to bring any less contemporary habits” to the new space, Schultz said. They redesigned their processes, including sterile processing to prevent infection. So, what’s left? Fine tuning. “We want to take every employee and every physician through the building, so we can emphasize what’s going to be different, so we ensure safety,” Schultz said. Then, they’ll move into the new space. "There will be overlap,” when both buildings are in use, she said, so there won’t be a point when the hospital can’t take patients.”