Lexington Medical Center’s new addition is helping treat patients and keep staff safe.

LMC’s new patient care tower has an industry-leading design that’s enhancing the delivery of health care for patients with covid-19.

During the design phase for the new tower, the hospital worked with Dynamix Engineering to develop a heating, ventilation and air conditioning system that would allow Lexington Medical Center to meet challenges such as a pandemic with a highly contagious disease.

The heart of the new tower’s HVAC system is its ability to create isolation rooms as needed with the touch of a button. These rooms help prevent the spread of infection through the air.

“We asked the engineers to build in the ability for any nursing unit in our new tower to meet the air exchange requirements of a typical critical care unit,” said Mike Greeley, vice president of Facilities and Support Services at Lexington Medical Center.

One way that works is by setting patient rooms to “negative pressure,” which stops air from escaping out of the room. Instead, air is sucked in, filtered, then moved outside of the building.

While a lot of hospitals have positive and negative pressure rooms, it’s typical to have only 1 or 2 negative pressure rooms on each nursing unit. The significance of Lexington Medical Center’s HVAC system is that it can create them as needed and allow entire floors to be converted to negative pressure with one simple step.

Lexington Medical Center infectious disease physician Emilio Perez-Jorge, MD, FACP, says only 2-4% of all hospital rooms in the United States are equipped for negative pressure.

“The ability to convert entire units to negative pressure has benefitted Lexington Medical Center by allowing us to keep known covid-19 patients in the same space with a dedicated staff, minimizing the use of personal protective equipment and limiting exposure to other patients not impacted by covid-19,” Dr. Perez said.

“We’re able to provide efficient and extraordinary care during this unprecedented event.”

On the flip side, the HVAC system can also be set to make a patient’s room have “positive pressure.” That means the room has slightly more air than the hallways surrounding it, which keeps airborne pathogens from entering the room and potentially harming the patient. It’s helpful for patients with weakened immune systems or who are undergoing surgery.

“It helps reduce the likelihood of non-infectious patients catching the virus while they are hospitalized for other reasons,” Greeley added.

When the covid-19 pandemic began, Lexington Medical Center was able to create 12 negative pressure rooms in less than a day and had plans in place to convert entire floors.

The new tower also has copper fixtures and hardware in patient rooms and bathrooms. Copper has properties proven to kill bacteria, germs and viruses faster than any other natural surface.

Lexington Medical Center opened its 545,000 squarefoot new patient care tower in 2019. The 10-story building is home to the hospital’s Mother/Baby department, eight operating rooms, and six floors for surgical, oncology, critical care and obstetric patients.

It was designed for the present and the future as Lexington Medical Center works to take care of families, friends and neighbors throughout the Midlands community. The innovation has been valuable during the covid-19 pandemic.