Lutheran Kosciusko Hospital CEO Chad Towner, center with scissors, cuts the ribbon during the ribbon-cutting ceremony Tuesday for the hospital’s renovations.

Text and Photos
By David Slone
Times-Union

WARSAW — With the completion of its $30 million capital investment project, Lutheran Kosciusko Hospital celebrated Tuesday, Oct. 8, with an open house and a ribbon-cutting ceremony.

In welcoming everyone to the celebration, Assistant Chief Executive Officer Jayden Snyder said the investment was not only into the hospital, but also into the community.

“To expand access to high-quality care close to home for our loved ones, for our family, friends, neighbors and our community. So thank you for being here and thank you for supporting our hospital,” he said.

The renovation includes 25,700 square feet of new construction and renovations, including an expanded and redesigned lobby with new public entry; renovations to all patient rooms, public spaces and nursing stations; updates to the hospital facade; new campus exterior signage; and surgical services expansion.

Lutheran Kosciusko Hospital CEO Chad Towner speaks at Tuesday’s open house and ribbon-cutting ceremony for the renovations to the hospital.

Dr. Brian Reichenbach, LKH medical staff member and board of trustees member, said he was excited to see the facility grow and continue to serve the needs of the community.

“The medical staff at Lutheran Kosciusko has been committed to the delivery of quality health care in our community since 1976. This renovation and expansion makes access to care more convenient and comfortable for our patients, visitors and employees. The ongoing investment is a priority for the hospital and we hope our patients are pleased with the improvements we see around us here today,” he stated.

After going through all the renovations, Reichenbach said, “We as medical staff are proud of our support staff that make Lutheran Kosciusko Hospital the area’s only hospital with both an accredited chest pain center and an accredited stroke center.”

The hospital also offers quality medical care, including emergency care services, a birthing center, heart and stroke care, orthopedics, occupational health, rehab services, a sleep center, a wound care center and a cancer center providing some ongoing radiation therapy, he said.

“We, the Lutheran Health Physicians and Kosciusko Medical Group doctors and providers are proud to serve our community to make quality primary and specialty care accessible to residents,” Reichenbach stated.

District 1 Warsaw Common Councilman Juergen Voss said Tuesday’s event was a great occasion and much welcomed by the citizens of Warsaw.

“On behalf of the city of Warsaw, Mayor Jeff Grose … and the entire city council, I would like to congratulate Lutheran Health Network, Lutheran Kosciusko Hospital on the completion of this great additional project,” he said. “I would also like to thank you for your continued commitment of expanding your ability to serve the health needs of the citizens of the greater Kosciusko community.”

Rob Parker, president of the Kosciusko Chamber of Commerce, stated, “This is an amazing place of healing, amazing place of coming together as a community to make our community a better place. This new facade greets people and will make it easier for patients to come and get service. But it’s not just about the beauty and just the amazing infrastructure and architecture that’s done here. It’s really what’s happening behind the walls and the investment that Lutheran Health Network and Lutheran Kosciusko Hospital has made to make our community a better place, to make us healthy. And I just want to say thank you.”

Chad Towner, CEO of LKH, said he just joined the team three weeks ago.

Kosciusko Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Rob Parker gestures during comments at the open house and ribbon-cutting ceremony Tuesday for the Lutheran Kosciusko Hospital renovations.

“I’ve been a part of this community for quite some time. I actually started my career almost 48 years ago with Lutheran Health Network, and it’s about 20 years of Lutheran Health and then another seven years with another system northwest of here. This community has been in my sights for nearly 30 years,” he said, with friends and family living all over northern Indiana.

Towner said when one looks around at what they’ve been able to accomplish, “it’s really something else.” He’s tried to meet as many people as he could from staff to community leaders.

“This is something really special that we have here,” he said. “… We’re making a difference here, and close to home.”
With the $30 million investment to upgrade surgical services and other aspects of the building, Towner said they’re going to be able to recruit new people and new services here. He said they will play a significant part in helping to bring more businesses and jobs here and helping to grow the area. In order to do that, Towner said they had to have the infrastructure here to be able to grow themselves.

“Lutheran Health Network is committed to what we’re doing here in Kosciusko County,” Towner said.

On a tour of the renovations with local media before the ceremony, Snyder’s first stop was the front desk.

Director of Public Access Kathryn Bandy said so far already this year, LKH has done about 75,000 registrations through the facility. The renovations include four new registration booths and two patient financial counselor booths.

“As far as the lobby, you’ll see it was developed in mind to create a very open concept, a welcoming atmosphere for when people enter here,” said Snyder. “We’ve also completely renovated our exterior here. We’ve redone the parking lot, landscaping. We’ve added a nice little dining or seating area outside, just to create a more welcoming environment.”

He noted they’ve also added private registration bays.

Taking the new hallway to the left of the front desk leads one to the perioperative services.

“So this is our pre- and post-op areas. This is where we get patients ready for surgery and where we get them ready to go home,” said Kimberly Finch, chief nursing officer. “We used to have 20 beds. We now have 23 beds. So, designed a little bit different. The rooms are larger and we have two nursing stations now.”

The separate individual rooms go around to the operating room, and then to post-anesthesia care unit, also known as the recovery rooms. After the PACU, patients return to the pre- and post-op area.

Jennifer Byall, director of surgical services, said the new OR has state-of-the-art equipment. “This is where we do a lot of our robotic surgery. One of our suites where we do a lot of our robotic surgeries,” she said.

Any type of surgery can be done in the OR, from orthopedic cases to appendectomy and more. Byall said, “If you don’t know, robotic surgery is laparoscopic surgery. So what’s really cool about it is, with laparoscopic surgery, your instrumentation goes forward and back and side to side. With your robotic surgery, it’s the same instrumentation done the same way, but it can go 360 and we have a space in there where we can CO2 and kind of blow up the belly, for example, on a hernia or gall bladder, appendix, and then we can see and what that means for the patient is much quicker recovery.”

It’s all very high tech. Finch said LKH has two of the robots. Byall said they do a lot of robotic surgery. The hospital has two surgeons, who, between the two of them, have done well over 1,000 robotic surgeries.

“Since we’ve started doing robotic surgery in 2000, we’ve done over 2,000 altogether,” she said.

Next on the tour was the PACU, in a new location that’s been expanded and has nine bays instead of seven. Patients go straight to the PACU from OR for recovery. Once they recover in the PACU for phase 1 recovery, the patients are moved to the pre- and post-op area for phase 2 recovery. Byall said the PACU is very quiet, and that’s exactly the type of environment one wants for recovery.

The last little room is a consultation room for a physician to speak with family members.

“This is a $30 million investment that we’ve made in our community to really expand access to care so that more patients can come through and receive the care that they need close to home, rather than having to travel far distances. So we’re really excited about that expanded capacity, updated technology to serve more patients,” Snyder said.