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When the University of Iowa Health Care academic medical campus in North Liberty welcomes its first orthopedics patient on April 28, the magnitude of the moment won’t be lost on J. Lawrence “Larry” Marsh, MD.
With this first patient, Iowa officially becomes home to the newest facility in the nation for musculoskeletal care, training, and research.
“Other centers have large orthopedics departments, but most don’t have a building like this,” says Marsh, professor and chair of the UI Department of Orthopedics and Rehabilitation. “In terms of size and scope, there’s one other center, maybe a couple, in the nation that compares to this.”
Granted, the North Liberty campus includes care and services available to all types of patients: an emergency department and Level 4 trauma center, advanced diagnostic imaging capabilities, and a 24-hour drive-thru pharmacy.
But for Marsh, the North Liberty campus is “second to none” in terms of the inclusion of orthopedics care services, training, and research under one roof. He spoke to Medicine Iowa about the new campus and what it will mean for patients, learners, and faculty and staff.
As Iowa’s population gets older, the demand for orthopedic surgery and expertise—in joint replacement, spine, and other areas—continues to grow, as does the need for post-surgery care and follow-up. The North Liberty campus provides greater access to our services and greater convenience for patients. It’s part of our ongoing commitment to taking care of Iowans—here in the local community and across the state. We have always provided the most complex care for patients with the most challenging problems in the state, and we will continue to do so. We will now be enabled to better serve Iowans with the full range of orthopedic problems, providing them better access and care in a world-class facility.
Patients will appreciate that all our services will be in one easy-to-navigate location—from clinic visits to surgery to post-surgery rehab, plus advanced imaging, pharmacy, durable medical equipment, and related services.
We have 12 operating rooms with state-of-the-art technology, including surgical robotics, and shelled spaced for four additional ORs. We also have a designated preoperative care area and PACU [post-anesthesia care unit]. Two rooms were designed and built for procedures that can be done under local anesthetic but don’t require an operating room—carpal tunnel release procedures, trigger finger treatments, or lumbar injections, for example. We also offer our nationally recognized bone health program for patients that need these evaluations.
The third level of the hospital includes the inpatient unit, with 36 beds. The proximity of the ORs to the inpatient care areas will make the post-surgery transfer of patients to their rooms easy for staff and patients. Each inpatient room provides private accommodations and will have technology that supports telehealth consultations with specialists at the university campus. For example, a UI Health Care cardiologist can conduct a telehealth visit with an ortho patient with atrial fibrillation to assist the NL team in managing the patient. Also, an internal medicine hospitalist will be available in person or by consult every day of the week, and an infectious disease specialist will also have an in-house presence.
The location will be a big difference. It will be easy to drive to, easy to park, easy to check in, and easy to find your way. Compared to our university campus clinics located in the lower level of one of the pavilions, this will be a welcome change—especially for those with mobility challenges, which is common among orthopedic patients.
Patient flow within the new North Liberty hospital supports a seamless experience. For example, diagnostic imaging is integrated on each clinic floor. After check-in, patients needing imaging will be able to get an X-ray or scan and then proceed directly to their exam room. We’ll also have an anesthesia clinic designed to streamline preoperative care for patients.
We have a state-of-the-art indoor/outdoor space for physical therapy and rehab, making it easy for patients to receive rehab immediately after a clinic visit or procedure. Pharmacy and DME [durable medical equipment] are on-site, too—another convenience for patients.
Students, residents, and fellows will have access to the best facilities to learn, work with our faculty and staff, and interact with patients. In anticipation of this transition, we have started expanding our educational programs for residents and fellows.
Our resident physicians will be able to hone their surgical expertise in our skills lab, which was built with simulation in mind. Also, a purpose-built education center will serve not only our learners and staff of other clinical services in the building but also facilitate educational programming for the local community and public at large.
We have a strong clinical research enterprise. All our teams do clinical research, and we’ll have clinical research staff on-site to work with patients and assist with follow-up. Co-locating clinical research with patient care programs in one location will provide more opportunities to expand access to clinical trials, and it’ll be much easier for patients to consider joining a clinical trial, which gives them early access to new treatments and devices. It’s another aspect of the one-stop shop philosophy for our patients.
Our resident physicians will also have access to our Biomechanics Research and Gait Lab facilities at the North Liberty campus—giving them the skills and experiences to contribute to orthopedic research long after their training is completed at UI Health Care.
I must also note that we will have some of our basic research facilities on-site. Co-locating our clinical research with basic and translational research will help make it as directly relevant to patients as possible.
I hope they will be impressed with the look and design of the facility. I want every patient to feel welcome and that every detail of their visit was efficient and comfortable. I want them to be pleased with how easy it is to park, check in, get to their appointment, and find that everything they need—imaging, pharmacy, rehab, DME [durable medical equipment]—is all right here. I also hope patients—and the entire community—feel a sense of pride that we’re committed to providing world-class care in a world-class facility.
I think people will be wowed before they walk into the building. It’s an amazing design. It fits the space here. And it will be up to us—the people that staff it—to have the same attitude and the same philosophy. I think the patient experience here and the experience of the clinicians and the employees who work here will all fit together. We’re not novel in doing this. When we open, ours will be one of the most remarkable orthopedics facilities in the country.
This was a total team effort across UI Health Care and the community to bring our services closer to where people live and make this amazing hospital a reality.
Keeping the patient perspective in mind guided a lot of our decision-making. In fact, it was required to optimally serve patients. And it was a multidisciplinary approach. Leaders from orthopedics, radiology, emergency medicine, internal medicine, anesthesia, pharmacy, nursing, the intensive care units, hospital administration, and others collaborated on decisions so that our approach was patient-focused, safe, and holistic.
There are many specialized facilities around the country but only a very few that will provide the range of comprehensive care that we provide.
Obviously, we’re proud of our program, and an outstanding program deserves outstanding facilities. And that’s what the North Liberty campus provides. It will allow us to better care for patients.
It will help us in recruiting orthopedics faculty, nurses, techs, and others. And it will help us in recruiting residents and fellows who’ll want to work with the best faculty in orthopedics.
This campus and the transition of our department to it is a once-in-a-career experience—not only for me but for all of us fortunate enough to be a part of it. I feel so fortunate that circumstances, combined with tremendous effort and a shared vision for the future, came together to make this happen.
We’ve always had a world-class ortho program. Now, we have a world-class facility to match for decades to come—one that will keep care local for our community and state and provide the care and services Iowans deserve. And it optimally supports our missions in education and research. We will strive to have the North Liberty facility be an example of a one-team approach, where we’re all working together to serve patients and missions.
Photos by Liz Martin