ity opens, she said these ….

ity opens, she said these small details will go a long way in improving care.

“We are very happy with this,” she said. “It’s a lot bigger, everything is modern and new. It makes it more effective and makes it so that everyone who comes into the room will be able to do their job.”

Besides these details, there are also some major changes in some of the larger equipment that will be used from time to time at the new hospital. In the imaging department, the manager said the new X-ray machines, CT scanner, and other machines are all the same type of machines that are being used at other area hospitals for their patients. Because they are all the same, he said the images produced by scans will now be able to be compared to other images taken at other hospitals without worrying about differences due to machine type.

“It is very nice, all of it is new,” he said. “The machines all now use the same parts, so it makes it easier for the technicians to operate. When we first joined with Marshfield, we had different brands of machines that we used, so it will be nice to have things that will be able to work together. We all now have the same equipment. You can go to a hospital here or elsewhere in the state and the images will all look the same now.”

The new hospital also has a room to serve bariatric patients. In the past, said the director of nursing, the Neillsville facility had to either rent a specialty bed for bariatric patients or have them transferred to another facility that could meet their needs. That will no longer be a problem.

“(In the past) If we had a bariatric patient we would have to rent a specialty bed or need to transfer them somewhere else because we did not have the equipment for them,” she said. “Now we have a specialty bed that has a thousand-pound weight limit that we can use.”

Although the new facility will officially open on May 10 with its first patients, Marg said the transition process will actually begin over the weekend of May 8-9. Starting with the Emergency Room, she said patients will begin being transferred after 5 a.m. on Saturday morning, and anyone coming to the hospital with an emergency situation will be directed on to the new facility for treatment.

“At 5 a.m. that Saturday morning the ER will no longer see patients,” she said. “There will be a process to take the patients one by one in an ambulance to the new hospital until all the patients are gone. People coming after that will be directed to the new hospital.”

The rest of the hospital’s services will resume at the new facility on May 10. The gift shop, and Art of Optometry will also open at the N3700 River Ave. location the same day. Sniteman’s Pharmacy and the YMCA Fitness Center are expected to open the following week on May 17.