Morris Hospital completes $13.2 million perioperative services renovations

Morris Hospital & Healthcare Centers has completed a $13.2 million renovation of its perioperative services on the hospital main campus, resulting in state-of-the-art facilities for patients having surgery, endoscopy, and minor procedures, according to a release from Morris Hospital.

The renovations include: three new operating rooms built for today’s modern technology, new sterile processing facilities where surgical instruments are cleaned, sterilized, and transported to the operating rooms, two new endoscopy rooms for GI and bronchoscopy procedures, a dedicated room for minor procedures, five additional same day surgery rooms where patients begin and end their same day surgery experience, and a number of patient and family focused amenities, according to the release.

“Renovations are always extremely complex, especially in hospitals because we have to wait for one area to get completed and occupied in order to create the vacant space that will get renovated next,” Tom Dohm, president & CEO of Morris Hospital & Healthcare Centers, said in the release. “That was precisely the case with our perioperative renovations that were completed in two phases over a period of two years. It was like piecing together a complex puzzle.”

Along with the dramatic enhancements to the peri-operative services clinical space, the latest round of renovations at Morris Hospital have also resulted in a new, dedicated surgical waiting room for family members accompanying patients on the day of surgery. In the new surgical waiting room, a specially assigned volunteer and patient tracker board are designed to help keep loved ones informed as the patient progresses from the same day surgery area to the operating room, and then to recovery, according to the release.

Another enhanced amenity is a dedicated exit on the west side of the hospital campus, offering greater privacy for surgical patients as they leave the hospital.

“Our perioperative renovations have been years in the making,” said Dohm. “We are thrilled to bring the project to completion and to be providing our community with the best surgical facilities available anywhere.”

The completion of the perioperative services renovations brings the $64 million master facility plan that was announced in 2018 to a close. Since 2020, Morris Hospital has opened a comprehensive medical facility in Diamond-Coal City and completed a major modernization on the hospital main campus that resulted in a new emergency department, women’s imaging center, infusion therapy center, lab collection area, cardiac diagnostic and imaging services departments, and interventional prep/recovery area adjacent to the cath lab, according to the release.

“When we reflect back on five years ago, there’s just no comparison to what the first floor of the hospital looks like today,” said Dohm.

“In addition to keeping up with advancements in the delivery of healthcare by modernizing our patient care areas on first floor, we have successfully enhanced the hospital infrastructure, our disaster response capabilities, privacy and wayfinding for our patients, and functionality and efficiencies for our staff. It’s all part of our ongoing commitment to providing our community with state-of-the-art healthcare facilities that are close to home,” Dohm said in the release.

Serving patients from 29 locations, Morris Hospital & Healthcare Centers includes the 89-bed Morris Hospital, as well as physician offices in Braidwood, Channahon, Diamond-Coal City, Dwight, Gardner, Marseilles, Mazon, Minooka, Morris, Newark, Ottawa, and Seneca.