DCMH needs a helping hand

If you have never been to Door County Memorial Hospital, consider yourself extremely lucky. For the other 99.99 percent of Door County residents who have lived on the peninsula for longer than a month, odds are you have been inside the walls of the 45 year old hospital – either for medical care yourself, or to visit a loved one.

DCMH has plans to expand facilities.

The Door County residents and visitors treated within those walls are too many to count, and the walls and infrastructure housed inside them are beginning to show the wear and tear of four decades of caring for those in need, according to Mike Herlache, director of the DCMH Foundation. That wear and tear, along with the approval of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) by the federal government, was the impetus behind the decision made by DCMH administration and board of directors to create a 10 year, $40 million campaign, called “Legacy of Quality Care,” to update and expand facilities in the hospital. The campaign began in 2000. By 2003 the Surgical Services addition was completed; in 2005 the Door County Cancer Center was open for patient treatment; and the Women and Children’s Health center and permanent MRI services were finished in 2007.

These additions have allowed DCMH to expand and improve services for the Door and Kewaunee County communities, Herlache said. However, the next phase of expansion is projected to cost $21 million – more than half of the total renovation costs. This renovation will include a new 7,000 square foot emergency room on the first floor and 23,000 square feet of private obstetrics, intensive care unit and general patient rooms on the second floor.

The reason for these improvements, Herlache said, is increased demand for privacy and improved efficiency. The new emergency room will have private bays and a centralized nursing area. No longer can the image of a lone nurse making rounds down a long, echoing hallway be used to describe DCMH.

“We’ve gone from having wards off of long hallways with all kinds of people and illnesses in one room, to private rooms,” Herlache said. “HIPAA laws have increased patient privacy, which is a big reason there aren’t any dual-occupancy rooms being built anywhere. Additionally, the population is aging, so people are sicker when they present to us. So there are medical reasons to isolate people as well.”

“The plumbing and electrical are all original” to the 1963 construction, Herlache added. “I’ve seen pieces of pipe, steel pipe, that are razor thin. So thin you could almost poke your finger through because of friction from the county’s hard water. We have to move on making improvements to that type of infrastructure.”

Part of the expansion project includes making all rooms private.

In order to complete the third and final phase of expansion and improvement at DCMH, the hospital is calling on the people who use the services of DCMH to help with the fundraising effort. The asking price from DCMH to the community is $2,500,000.

DCMH staff members and volunteers have already turned the fundraising focus inward and pooled more than $200,000 from their own pockets. This effort shows the strength of the “hospital family,” Herlache said.

“If one of us or a member of our family is in an accident, we have to go to the emergency room just like everyone else,” Herlache said. “We want to make sure for our families’ sakes, that we’ve got the best facilities.

“We are internally conscious of being the only game in town,” Herlache said. “It’s an island mentality that we’re all family and friends: people we know are going to be getting services in this hospital, so it’s extremely important that the quality stays high and the price stays reasonable.”

As the only game in town, Door County Memorial Hospital stands to gain, or lose, quite a bit if the necessary funds are not secured through this community fundraising effort. A loss of even two percent of the patients that currently cross the thresholds of DCMH could mean millions of dollars to the hospital.

“We’ve done multiple studies on the infrastructure of the hospital, and if we can’t complete this project, especially this last one, the hospital will start crumbling from the inside out,” Herlache said. “But if this final phase is completed, this community will essentially have an entirely new hospital.”

Donations to the “Legacy of Quality Care” campaign may be sent directly to the Door County Memorial Hospital Foundation: 1843 Michigan Street, P.O. Box 230, Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin 54235. For more information call 920.746.1071.