St. Joseph's unveils $75M expansion plan

St. Joseph's Women's Hospital Wednesday announced a planned $75 million expansion that will mean private rooms for all patients, including the tiniest premature babies.

"This is not just nice; it's about safety," Isaac Mallah, president and chief executive officer of the hospital, told a group of doctors, nurses and community representatives.

"It's proven that private attention cuts down on problems and helps these small babies thrive. These are babies that might not have survived five to 10 years ago."

Private rooms are part of the new thinking about caring for these vulnerable infants.

Locally, Tampa General Hospital is constructing private rooms for its neonatal unit.

Such rooms are gaining popularity because more space and time with family can give a struggling baby's progress a big boost, experts say.

St. Joseph's expansion will include a five-story, 125,000-square-foot tower connected to the main hospital. It will have 64 private neonatal suites for patients and families and 24 additional private suites for medical-surgical patients. It also will have a new center for breast health care.

Both areas are expected to open in fall 2012.

The existing neonatal units accommodate up to 55 babies in clusters the size of a typical hospital patient room. Each cluster has about seven babies and two nurses.

Under the new system, families can stay overnight with their babies as long as they wish, and nurses will typically be responsible for two babies at a time. The patient suites will have bathrooms and showers.

The hospital also announced a donation from the Shimberg family to help build the new Hinks and Elaine Shimberg Breast Center to focus on breast cancer.

The hospital would not say how much the Shimbergs gave, but the family's "sizeable" donation made the expansion possible.

Mayor Pam Iorio, who spoke at the groundbreaking, said she delivered two children at the hospital and thinks the expansion will help Tampa offer even better medical care to the Bay area.

"We all know someone who has received that bad diagnosis," she said. "We need to be the kind of community that has this kind of facility."

Lewis P. Rubin, director of newborn services at Tampa General and professor-in-chief for the division of neonatal care at the University of South Florida, said private rooms for critical babies is the wave of the future.

And it's not just about making the families comfortable.

Science, he says, shows that babies in such rooms get better faster and go home earlier.

Tampa General, he said, plans to open 60 of the hospital's planned 82 private rooms in November.