70-year history of baby deliveries at downtown Kennewick hospital ends this month
Expectant mothers will start arriving in less than two weeks at the new Trios Birth Center on the hospital’s Southridge campus, ending a 70-year history of baby deliveries at the original Kennewick General Hospital.
About 1,400 babies are born each year at the downtown Auburn Street facility.
Before the new center in south Kennewick opens March 29, the public will have a chance to tour it.
A ribbon cutting ceremony and tours are planned for 4:30 p.m. Wednesday. March 23, at the hospital, 3810 Plaza Way, Kennewick.
“We look forward to being able to serve the community with this new unit and to have all of our hospital services under on roof after being on separate campuses for nearly a decade,” said John Solheim, Trios chief executive.
Hospital services have been split between the hospital’s original location near downtown Kennewick and Southridge ever since Trios added a new campus in south Kennewick. It was a decision made before the public hospital was sold.
The consolidation of the campuses is expected to streamline services and patient support by reducing travel time and simplifying the logistics of operating between the two cross-town sites.
It also should eliminate some confusion as some people looking for the birth center have showed up at the Southridge hospital, Solheim said as construction on the new center was underway.
The new birth center is planned to care for the same number of mothers and babies as at the Auburn Street building.
In the new center families will find “easy access, comfortable rooms and state-of-the-art equipment,” said Dena Putnam-Gilchrist, chief nursing officer for Trios Health.
LifePoint Health, the owner of Trios and Lourdes Health in Pasco, invested $22 million to make the new birth center possible and also is spending $6 million for an ongoing expansion of medical/surgical space.
Southridge hospital expansion
The center addition was built on the second and third floors of the Southridge hospital. The addition’s 23,400 square feet is supplemented with about nearly 10,000 square feet of existing space that was renovated for the birth center.
The center will have six labor, delivery, recovery and postpartum rooms, plus two rooms for cesarean section deliveries. It also has a critical care nursery for up to 10 babies born after 32 weeks’ gestation.
The 37 licensed beds on the Auburn Street campus will be assigned to the Southridge campus, bringing total beds there to 111.
Trios Health’s overall licensed bed count will not change with the opening of the birth center.
From the space that was renovated as part of the construction project, 11 existing beds from the medical/surgical floors were converted to postpartum beds and are now being relocated to an expanded third floor.
Construction is expected to continue on that expansion through July by Layton Construction, headquartered in Utah, which also was the contractor for the birth center addition.
It finished work on the birthing center ahead of schedule, allowing it to open a month earlier than planned when construction began.
Until 7 a.m. March 29 patents in labor should continue to check in at the Family Birth Center at Auburn Street. After that they should check in at the emergency room entrance on the Southridge campus.
Plans are in the works to sell the Auburn Street hospital building for a proposed detox and treatment center for substance abuse.
The Trios Obstetrics and Women’s Health Clinic already has relocated from the DeBit building next to the downtown Trios birth center to the sixth floor of the Trios Care Center at Southridge.
The clinic with four doctors opened its new offices at Southridge at the start of the month.
Birth center tours
Those attending the new birth center ribbon cutting at 4:30 p.m. and touring the new birth center from 5 to 6:30 p.m. on March 23 will enter the new hospital at Entrance B and will be screened for COVID-19 symptoms.
All participants must wear a face mask and maintain social distancing inside the building.
