By KEVIN CHIRI

Editor and Publisher

LULING – So you think there is nothing new in hospitals these days?

Try this on for size:

—Individual flat screen TV’s in the patient’s rooms.

—Hospital beds that call the nurses if someone falls out.

—Fingerprint operated drug cases to ensure accuracy when handing out pills.

—Hospital beds with massage units in them.

—Units with sensors on nurses so they can be located anywhere in the hospital at the push of a button in an emergency.

—Special hospital rooms for morbidly obese people who weigh between 400 and 700 pounds.

—Air ducts in the A.C. units that filter out germs.

And that is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg when you enter the new three-story, $14 million wing of the St. Charles Hospital, that made its debut before the public this weekend.

A private VIP viewing of the facility was offered on Friday night to public officials and invited guests, then the hospital was open to the public this past Saturday for anyone in the community to come and check it out.

Needless to say, the impression was nothing but positive from those who visited, said CEO Federico Martinez.

“Everyone has been so positive, and so impressed with what we have done here,” Martinez said on Friday night, taking a break from personally greeting all the guests as they came in. “We’re just so happy with the finished result, especially because of what this will mean for patient care in this area, and how much better we can serve the public.”

The new wing was started in November, 2006, and after some construction delays, finished this month and is now ready for new patients, once final state approval is given. Martinez said that could have occurred as early as yesterday.

Guests who came for a sneak-peek this past weekend got quite an eyeful, but not just from the spacious 56,000-square-foot facility, but just as much so from the improved technology and features throughout the building.

A new nuclear medicine unit has joined the other units in that department, with new MRI, CAT Scan and mammography equipment all coming in since after Hurricane Katrina.

The cardiology department is now 3,800 square feet of space, probably “three times” as big at least, from what they had before, said Director of Cardiology Laurie Salas.

The cardiac rehabilitation unit is the only nationally accredited unit in the River Parishes, with a nice view now into a courtyard through huge, glass windows.

Adding a lot of space and improving the conditions immensely for patients is the dialysis unit, where they now have triple the size, and individual flat screen TVs hooked to every chair. Nurses are now positioned in a way that they can watch every patient at once.

The ICU unit is now “almost like a suite” said Director of ICU Polly Gonzalez.  But the hospital bed there is like many others in the new facility, which sport an amazing amount of new features.

The bed has a weight alarm system, so nurses are alerted if someone is no longer in the bed. There is a massage system in the bed, as well as increased controls to even help the bed become a chair. The latitude arm system next to the beds has every needed feature for tending to the patients, eliminating so many units that had to be in the way before.

One of the more interesting features in the hospital that patients won’t actually see is the PyxisMed Station, which is a drug dispensing unit that works with fingerprint access from nurses. Everything operates on a computer screen, where the nurse must call up the patient’s name, doctor, dosage of medicine, and then press a button. The unit finds that drawer with the medicine only and pops it out exactly as prescribed.

The entire third floor is now the new psych unit, with 20 private beds, an improvement over the old unit that had only semi-private beds for most patients.

Safety has been built into every aspect of the rooms, even to the point of having stainless steel toilets that can’t be broken apart as the old ones could, along with screws for everything that can’t be taken out. Beds are even bolted to the floor. More camera surveillance throughout the unit will help with safety, and then there is what one nurse called “the Low Jack system,” which allows nurses at the main desk to press a button to locate any nurse on the unit, through a badge they are wearing.

There are now two isolation rooms for any highly contagious diseases that are treated, as well as rooms for morbidly obese patients who weigh between 400 and 700 pounds.

The new wing for St. Charles Hospital was named after Dr. David Vial, the longtime coroner for 37 years in the parish, who was a dedicated caregiver for decades.