The Big Reveal of Our New Patient Room

Over the last couple of weeks, the question “what is going on?” has been echoed by many visitors and staff as they walked through our main lobby. One visitor jokingly asked one of our employees, “Is the Wizard of Oz hiding in there?” There was no wizard – it was a mockup of the future of inpatient care at GBMC.

On Tuesday, the mystery of what was behind the curtain was solved, as I was joined by Dr. JoAnn Ioannou, DNP, MBA, RN, NEA-BC, our Executive Vice President for Hospital Operations and Chief Nursing Officer, and Stacey McGreevy, CPA, our Vice President of Support Services, for a LIVE virtual tour of the full-scale model of one of our new Promise Project patient rooms! The Promise Project is a three-story hospital addition which will feature 60 spacious patient rooms across two inpatient units, a modern lobby and reception area, healing garden, chapel, and more. 

We have been in the design and planning phase for over a year, and many disciplines have been involved. The mockup was built to showcase the new room design and to generate excitement about the project as we get ready to move to the public phase of fundraising. 

The new rooms will be quite spacious (double the size of our current rooms) to more appropriately accommodate patient and clinical staff needs and will have advanced sound proofing to facilitate the rest and healing process. Other improvements include more storage for patient belongings and a new bathroom that is ADA compliant, allowing for easier use by all patients. 

One of the biggest improvements in the rooms is a result of lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic. The unit design will provide us with the ability to make each room a negative pressure room, which will help us protect against infectious diseases. We will be the only hospital in Maryland to have units with this ability. 

I am very proud to be at the forefront of innovation with our new patient rooms that will support the extraordinary work of our physicians, nurses, and other staff. This is an investment to move us closer to achieving our vision – to every patient, every time, we will provide the care we would want for our own loved ones. I encourage you all to visit the model of our future patient rooms and to finally get a look at what was behind the curtain!

COVID-19…One year later
March 5th marks the one-year anniversary of Governor Hogan announcing the state’s first cases of COVID-19 and declaring a State of Emergency. Since then, hospitals and health systems began battling COVID-19 as cases spread across our state. 

I continue to be grateful to our entire GBMC team for all they have done to stand up to the virus. We still have work to do, but the pandemic is abating thanks to good hand hygiene, social distancing, the wearing of masks, and people getting immunized. 

I am also grateful to our patients and the communities we serve, for their unwavering support and commitment to GBMC. Whether it was donating masks, providing food to our front-line workers, offering prayers for our team members, or acting in other ways, big and small, to show their gratitude and their care for our people, it has been truly inspiring. Thank you!