A heated helipad is the summit of the new 10-story Sparrow Tower, with an excellent view of the Lansing community it will serve.

“It’s built to hold a helicopter as large a Blackhawk,” said Ira Ginsburg, senior vice president of hospital operations. “It’s heated so you don’t have to shovel the snow. We’ll be able to bring the patients right down from here to the emergency room.”

“Not many facilities have a helipad that allows you to come right…down trauma elevators either to the [operating room] or to the [emergency department],” said John Upton, the site manager for Granger Construction Company, in a video about the new tower.

On the floors below, Sparrow will have brand new surgery, critical care, heart and vascular, oncology, and orthopedics departments, as well as new emergency facilities, including the Granger Pediatric Emergency Department to keep children separate from adult medical emergencies.

“When I came here in 1975, we had an emergency department that was about 1,800 square feet,” Michael Clark, MD, the emergency department attending physician, noted in the video. “Now it’s going to be about [60,000] square feet. The big feature…is that we’re going to be able to separate the children from the adults…with the special [needs] that they have and their families.”

“The physicians and nurses are all especially trained in the care of children,” explained Robert Femia, MD, Sparrow’s medical director. “It’s not just the facility; there is support on the clinical side as well.”

“Everybody always feels good about helping children,” said Duane Vernon, chairperson of the Coaches for Kids campaign that raised funds for the wing. “It turned into being coaches, athletes, and officials for kids. It began in 1999 with a relationship I had with [former MSU football coach] Nick Saban. It just continued from there.”

The athletic departments at both MSU and LCC pledged their support to the project, raising over $5 million.

“This is only the second [pediatric emergency department] in the state,” Vernon noted. “The other one is in Detroit.”

There will also be other changes in emergency care.

“We will have a CAT scan in the emergency department, so will be able to get to the patients very quickly,” said Femia. “We have close to seven trauma patients a day. With all of this capacity, we should be able to get to them first.”

All of the new rooms in the tower are private, including the four for trauma patients, the 68 in emergency, 34 critical care beds, two medical/surgical patient care units with 66 rooms each, and four cardiac catheter labs.

“We will be able to place patients more easily,” said Larry Rawsthorne, MD, senior vice president of medical affairs, in the video. “We have a number of issues with bacteria that are resistant to drugs and, when we have to figure out what roommate a person can or can’t have, it adds time to the process….[having private rooms] will enable us to get patients to their rooms faster.”

“We’ve been treating 77,000 patients in a space built to see 40,000,” Femia stated.

“When the older hospital was built, they didn’t imagine the types of technology that goes into the rooms now,” noted Joe Ruth, chief strategy officer. “It keeps getting bigger and bigger, and there was never any thought to accommodate the families that stay with the patients. Now we have beds right in the rooms.”

“It’s a much bigger space for them to work in,” said Deb Moran, manager of ICU, of the new facilities for her staff on the third floor. “This has really opened the rooms up, and they will have more opportunities for input. One of the features that staff are looking forward to is a lift that will hold up to 600 pounds. That will really help in moving patients around.”

Additionally, all of the wires and monitoring equipment has been moved to the head of the bed, out of the patient’s way.

“The beds can be moved wherever we want them,” said Deb Mullen, manager of the coronary ICU on the same floor. “We now have a [medical equipment] boom that goes 330 degrees around the patient. This is state-of-the-art.”

“We want it to be a stress-free environment, so we can’t have a lot of clutter,” added Margo Sayre, director of critical care services.

“It has a homey atmosphere,” said Mullen.

The rooms will also have insulation for better sound control, lights with dimmer switches, and flooring with better padding for the nurses’ feet.

On the sixth floor, Michelle Ming, manager of the orthopedic unit, says her area was designed for patients with limited mobility in mind.

“We have a gym in this unit, so they can have therapy right [here],” she said. “Also, our trapezes that people use to help themselves [get out of bed] hang from the ceiling, so they will have full access to both sides of the bed.”

Ming is an example of how the tower will not only add more medical services to the area, but will bring in new staff as well. She came to Sparrow from a medical facility in Howell.

“It’s absolutely a great opportunity,” she said.

“We’ve been adding more nurses as of day one,” Femia stated. “And we’ll be adding more positions.”

Some of the floors are already open, while others will not be functioning until the summer. Currently, the top four floors are vacant, but were built anticipating future growth.