Riverbend project takes BCH’s Foothills campus to next phase

BOULDER — As the lights go down on Boulder Community Health’s Broadway location, things are looking up at the new medical pavilion at the organization’s Foothills Hospital location.

The Boulder City Council approved the 76,000-square-foot, 55-foot-tall BCH Riverbend Medical Pavilion building, Nov. 2, and demolition of the four existing buildings (4801, 4855, 4865 and 4885 Riverbend Road) may begin as early this month, said Jackie Attlesey-Pries, chief operating officer and chief nursing officer for BCH.  The approval included a zoning modification to the height restriction for the 2.55-acre site, east of 48th Street and the organization’s Foothills Hospital.

“We’re hoping we can secure the demolition permits in the next couple weeks, and begin actually building in the very early part of next year,” Attlesey-Pries said of the 2.55-acre project, which includes a five-story parking facility.  The Community Hospital Association, the parent company of BCH, owns eight of the 12 existing buildings on Riverbend Road, the remaining four of which are already filled either by BCH operations or physician leases.

SPONSORED CONTENT

The many benefits of simple, coordinated healthcare

Kaiser Permanente combines health care and coverage in one connected system to maximize employee health and minimize employer costs.

The hospital has sold its campus at Broadway and Balsam Avenue to the city of Boulder for $40 million, though Attlesey-Pries said the move to the new facilities probably won’t be finished until 2018. Importantly, Attlesey-Pries said the pavilion will also bring together integration of services for BCH patients that simply wasn’t possible before.

The bottom floor will house outpatient services, but will be split between behavioral health and the hospital’s integrative-care facility. Patients suffering from depression or addiction issues will meet with psychiatrists and psychologists here, as well as behavioral-health nurses and other specialists.

The pavilion will also have a procedure room — for more routine injections, for instance — and will also house the Guerra Fisher Institute for Electroconvulsive Therapy, which provides treatment for severe depression.

“We are expanding the space available for integrative care,” said Attlesey-Pries about the facility that will provide services such as therapeutic massage, acupuncture and Reiki. “We are also expanding into this whole arena of an integrative-care model — helping people deal with pain while perhaps reducing pain medication.”

That’s significant in the Riverbend Medical Pavilion, she said, especially considering that there are other significant patient facilities on the second floor. Two-thirds of this floor will be dedicated to inpatient rehabilitation for brain and spinal injuries.

“This will be a beautiful new unit, much of it dedicated to allowing people to regain their strength,” she said. “When part of the brain isn’t working well, it can cause a loss of control over other parts of the body” requiring very physical rehab.

Patients in the other third of the second floor will also have cause to use these facilities, as that section will house the outpatient neurology clinic. Patients suffering from neurologic diseases, such as multiple sclerosis and epilepsy, are also in need of physical rehab.

The top, or third, floor will house behavioral health in-patient facilities, increasing the number of beds from the 15 currently housed at the Broadway location to 18. While inpatient beds for behavioral patients have been increasing in Northern Colorado, most experts believe there is still a profound lack of such services.

“The utilization of the room is enhanced greatly (compared to the current space at BCH’s Broadway facility),” Attelesey-Pries said. “It’s going to be a very state-of-the-art facility — a safe environment for the patients, plus better security for all of the staff.

All of the services that will be housed at the Foothills Pavilion are now housed at the Broadway campus. However patients requiring significant testing services, such as MRIs and X-rays, currently need to be transported to Foothills Hospital.

“It will be nice to have those right across the street,” she said. “There are many times that patients have to be transported by ambulance.”

Creating a new campus that can support the many aspects of today’s medical fields in close proximity is an overall goal of the move to Foothills and Riverbend from the Broadway campus. The outpatient services available at the Riverbend Medical Pavilion, including the integrative-care aspects, will be important resources for many patients, including those at the nearby Rocky Mountain Cancer Center.

Attlesey-Pries said the Broadway campus is getting a bit empty, though at this point there are still significant departments located there, including outpatient and pulmonary rehab. Significant administrative personnel, including marketing and public relations, are also still housed at the Broadway campus.

“Other services have moved in, for instance hospice. Their lease was ending where they were so we were able to move them in (to the Broadway facilities),” she said. “There are a few other things there, medical office type things, but the majority of it is not fully utilized.”