Providence Holy Family Hospital’s newly remodeled and expanded Family Maternity Center is drawing positive feedback from patients and staff, and is well positioned to handle anticipated growth in demand for its “LDRP” model, which enables women to experience labor, delivery, recovery, and post-partum care in one room, hospital representatives say.

The maternity center opened Feb. 20, following completion of a $9.5 million construction project that got under way early last year on the second floor of the North Side hospital, located at 5633 N. Lidgerwood. Bouten Construction Co., of Spokane, was the general contractor on the project, and NAC|Architecture, of Spokane, designed it.

“Everybody did a great job in the planning. I think it flows very nicely, so we’re all very excited,” says Dr. John McKenna, chairman of the hospital’s obstetrics section.

“I think it really carries on the ideals of the physicians who were here before and originally launched the LDRP model at Holy Family several decades ago”, McKenna adds.

Tammy Powers, director of women’s services at both Holy Family and Providence Sacred Heart Medical Center and also director for the Providence Children’s Hospital, says, “We really tried to maximize on the patient experience.”

That includes by making the patient as comfortable as possible, even by including jetted tubs in the bathroom of every suite, and by providing a home-like setting with comfortable chairs and pullout sofas for family members, Powers says. Other amenities in the rooms include refrigerators and DVD players. 

With the expansion, Holy Family now has 16 larger LDRP rooms, four ante/post-partum rooms, three triage rooms, and a nursery with five specialty-care bassinets. That’s an increase of one LDRP room, one ante/post-partum room, and two special-care nursery beds from the hospital’s former maternity facilities. The triage rooms, intended to handle outpatient needs, are new. 

As before, the maternity center also includes a cesarean-section operating room. A special addition to the center is the Butterfly Room, a butterfly-adorned room intended for use by families mourning the loss of a baby. That feature is part of a supportive care services program offered through the Providence Center for Faith & Healing. 

 The expansion added 124 square feet of floor space to each of the single-room maternity suites, boosting them to 340 square feet, which hospital representatives say will provide greater comfort for mothers and their families, and better space to provide clinical care when needed. 

Holy Family currently handles more than 1,200 births a year, and McKenna says he sees the potential for that number to rise as word-of-mouth spreads about the hospital’s updated maternity center, which is designed to provide whatever services an expectant mother and her family need.

“It’s a more relaxed atmosphere (than what a traditional setting offers), but we have the medical services there if we need them,” he says. Referring to the large North Side populace the hospital serves, he says, “I think it’s a real benefit up here.”

McKenna is one of seven obstetricians on staff, plus one family doctor, who do deliveries at Holy Family.

Of the construction project, he says, “All of the attending providers have been wanting to do this for many years, and so we finally were able to get it going. I think it’s been about 10 years we’ve been working on this.”

In announcing plans for the project in November 2012, a Providence executive said that even routine births now involve more staff and equipment than in the past, causing patient rooms that once were considered spacious to become viewed as undersized.

In addition, hospital executives say, many expectant mothers now are choosing to have several family members present during labor and delivery, which led to a redesign of birthing rooms to be more accommodating to such groups.

Holy Family has been touted as the first hospital west of the Mississippi River to offer LDRP facilities back in the 1980s. Physicians there were said to be promoting the idea even earlier, when women typically were moved from a labor room into a delivery room and then to a recovery room.