COQUILLE, Ore. (KMTR) - After years of planning and months of construction, Coquille Valley Hospital's expansion is officially complete.
The hospital, located on 5th Street, finished up it's remodeling in April. It's nearly three times the size it used to be now boasting almost 60,000 square feet of patient rooms, laboratories, administrative offices and more. According to CEO Dennis Szilinski, there is also a lot more unique technology offering services that weren't necessarily available before. One of the new tools they have includes a MRI system that has advanced imaging.
Coquille Valley Hospital has some fine tuning to do, according to Szilinski, in the future. Yet, he said most patients seem fairly excited about the changes as they have improved not only hospital efficiency but also patient comfort.
""The community really appreciates the facility, I think they're impressed with the feel that they get," said Szilinski. Really, to be able to bring all of these together in such a way that we're still very efficient but at the same time can do that in expanded space that is also aesthetically very comforting, is very pleasing and a great healing environment."
Yet, with all the beauty and space in the new building, some have said it's actually a little black box that is setting Coquille Valley Hospital apart from the rest in the world.
The box is offered by Paradigm Multimedia, a company out of Eugene. They describe the unit as a "cost-effective solution" for places like patient rooms.
Essentially, the box - very small, also known as a HC20 with SureControl Technology - works with a pillow speaker (the bed side remotes you often find in hospitals) and a normal LCD or LED television to create quality image. What's unique about Coquille Valley Hospital, is that the HC20 is working with regular televisions to create three-dimensional images for patients to enjoy.
The luxury of watching 3D TV in the hospital is important, explained Szilinski, because it furthers the hospital's focus on patient care.
What the HC20s do may seem a little confusing to those who aren't tech-saavy but facilities who are using them have only praised what Paradigm Multimedia has come up with. Hospitals, dialysis centers and various health care facilities worldwide are using them for high-quality pictures on televisions. Not many people realize how different televisions become when installed in healthcare buildings.
Reinhold Baron from Paradigm Multimedia told NewsSource 16 the biggest message for them to get out is the fact that the fire marshall has in fact approved the HC20 to be installed in health care facilities. A lot of health care facilities have started off hesitant in the past because of concern for fire code - most hospital fire codes are managed under the idea that they're still working with bulky televisions - but even under such code, the boxes have proven safe. Now, there are 2,000 installed across the world.
Baron said the HC20 can be used for a multitude of things and right now, the company is exploring more options and ideas. They're considering installing the boxes in RVs so that at the touch of a button, one can start the coffee or turn on specific lights.
Coquille Valley Hospital explained to NewsSource 16 that in installing 3D televisions, considered an unaffordable luxury in some households, the hospital actually saved money. The boxes they're using from Paradigm Multimedia allowed them to get almost double the number of 3D capable televisions they would have otherwise been able to.
Coquille Valley Hospital, besides a palace located in Saudi Arabia, is the only facility using such technology in the world, according to Baron.
