Extreme Makeover - Texas Health Azle Style

As you may already know, Texas Health Azle (THAZ) is building a $2 million expansion on our existing campus. When finished, the hospital will have added over 70 parking spaces and a 5,000 square foot building. This will be accomplished through the demolition of the Annex and Lester’s buildings. (Ty Pennington’s agent hasn’t returned our calls yet, but we are still holding out hope!)

Over the past year, we have continued to add new services to the facility – including digital mammography, pain management, pulmonary services, childbirth education and women’s rehabilitation programs. In fact, the number of people using our outpatient services has increased almost 40% in the past three years! With all this growth, we are out of space and need to grow in order to continue to offer new services to the community.

We are currently completing the design phase which has involved hospital staff giving their input into the functionality and “look” of the new building. It has been a great deal of fun watching the staff get excited about the new building and how it will better serve our patients and staff.

For example:

Marsha Ingle (our community education extraordinaire) has been designing classrooms that will serve those who come for education classes – including our senior program (known as Better L.I.F.E.), CPR to the community, childbirth education and more. The new classrooms will also provide a space for something the community has requested the hospital provide – support groups.

Carole Dufresne (our information system guru) is making sure that all of the information systems and training classrooms are adequate for our patients and staff. The new building will have wireless access throughout and provide technologically-advanced equipment for training and education.

Mary Fonville and Buster Doherty (our mistress and master of facilities) are ensuring that the building is safe and operates efficiently. Most people who enter the new building will never give the air handling system a second thought, but know that Mary and Buster have thought long and hard about these issues so that you don’t have to.

The Hospital Auxiliary choosing to raise funds for a healing garden for both patients and staff to enjoy. (Stay tuned for more details on their event!)

There are too many individuals on the team to mention them all, but they have all contributed to every square inch of the new building already – and we haven’t even started construction!

So when are we starting construction?

We hope to begin work on the parking lot near the Medical Arts Plaza this summer. Once that is complete, we will move the employee parking to that area and begin demolition of the Lester’s building and construct the new building. The staff from the Annex will then move to the new building and we will demolish the Annex and complete the parking in front of the hospital. All of this should be complete by May of next year.

It is an exciting time for us at Texas Health Azle and we owe it to the members of this community who continue to support the facility and contribute to our growth. To follow our progress (and keep up-to-date on other hospital happenings), keep following this blog… and don’t be too shy to leave a comment. We love to hear from you!

A blank page and a fresh start

A blank page. It isn’t often that one gets a fresh start. But, here I am, at the first entry of a new blog. Now, I am definitely a latecomer to the blogosphere – there are many A-list bloggers who have been doing this for years. So, you may ask, why am I starting now?

The truth of the matter is that I am always looking for ways to be better. And I believe that having this forum to communicate with all of the different people who are connected to Texas Health Azle will help me and the hospital better serve our patients, staff, physicians and the community. Now, I could be wrong – in which case, I may have the shortest blogging career in history – but Edward de Bono once wrote “It is better to have enough ideas for some of them to be wrong, than to be always right by having no ideas at all.”

I am starting this with no preconceived agenda, and a few modest goals:

1. To communicate what is going on at the hospital to those who are interested – Obviously all official news can still be found at http://www.texashealth.org/, but you can find the information (and more!) here as well.

2. To bring relevant healthcare issues to the table and describe how they might impact us on a local level.

3. To provide an opportunity for all members of the Texas Health Azle community to interact and discuss relevant issues.

4. To allow us to get quick relevant feedback on what is on your mind and how we can do better.

Is there something you want to read about? Questions that you would like addressed? Feel free to email me or comment on the site and I will respond. In the meantime, check back to read about one of our great employees, why we ask your name so many times when you come and visit and where we are in the construction process on a new $2 million expansion of the hospital campus.