Leaders Break Ground for Expansion 2020
COVINGTON – Employees, volunteers, donors and neighbors joined St. Tammany Parish Hospital executives, board of commissioners and local elected officials this morning to commemorate the hospital’s next expansion at a groundbreaking ceremony.
Speakers included Joan M. Coffman, STPH president and CEO, John Evans, chairman of STPH Board of Commissioners, Mike Binnings, STPH Chaplain, Covington Mayor Mike Cooper and St. Tammany Parish President Pat Brister. The entire Covington council was in attendance, as were mayors from neighboring Mandeville, Madisonville and Abita Springs.
“Today, we are embarking upon the next phase of Expansion 2020,” Joan M. Coffman, STPH president and CEO, announced, “Our three-year, 100-million-dollar construction project to expand the footprint and improve our environment for critical care, women’s and children’s care, and, ultimately to eliminate semi-private rooms from our hospital campus. We undertake these types of endeavors as central to our mission to provide world-class care close to home for residents of west St. Tammany Parish.”
The 158,839-square foot addition will be four stories tall, and will enable the hospital to retrofit older areas currently serving patients in semi-private rooms. Ultimately, by the end of 2020, St. Tammany Parish Hospital will offer all private rooms for patient care.
“St. Tammany Parish Hospital continues to anticipate and recognize the needs of our residents,” Pat Brister, parish president, said. “They provide seamless transitions for growth through facility enhancements like this addition, to make not-for-profit community health and wellness patient care paramount.”
The addition will include 30 patient rooms on the second floor with satellite radiology, surgical on-call rooms and support spaces; and 40 acuity-adjustable patient rooms on the third floor as well as an expansion of the Level III NICU. The fourth floor will begin as shell space to enable future growth, and the first floor will house a new administrative suite, enabling the existing administrative and conference areas to be renovated to expand support services such as sterile processing.
Covington Mayor Mike Cooper noted, “Today’s groundbreaking reminds me of the historic moment at midnight in the summer of 2011, seeing the steel girders of the Sky Bridge span Tyler Street. I look forward to the same excitement when the new girders of this four-story expansion are in the Covington skyline.”
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A full-service acute care facility committed to providing world-class healthcare and the latest technology, St. Tammany Parish Hospital delivers today’s life-improving procedures with the utmost care to area residents with emphasis on wellness, preventive care and disease management close to home. STPH is recognized for quality, safety and the patient experience by CareChex, Leapfrog, Healthgrades, Hospital Compare, Women’s Choice and US News & World Report. St. Tammany Parish Hospital is an independent service district in a clinically integrated partnership with Ochsner Health System. Together, the two organizations focus on aligning their healthcare offerings to best serve patients and families in west St. Tammany and surrounding areas. Under their agreement, the two organizations retain their autonomy; neither partner manages nor owns the other. STPH is a self-supporting not-for-profit community hospital; it receives no tax funding. Learn more at stph.org.