Kalispell Regional Medical Center celebrates the completion of its new four-level, $42 million surgical tower Saturday and Sunday with tours for the public.

Jim Oliverson, hospital spokesman, said people may come from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday and from 1 to 4 p.m. Sunday to the Sunnyview Lane side of the hospital. Oliverson will greet the public in the admitting area lobby on the west end of the front side of the hospital.

“We’ll have lots of volunteers who will give people maps for a self-directed tour,” Oliverson said.

Jayne Wangerin, supervisor of the operating room, central sterilizing and complementary therapies, provided an early-bird tour for the Inter Lake Monday. She encouraged the public to take advantage of this opportunity to see the facilities.

“I think they will be pleasantly surprised,” she said. “People think we’re just a little rural hospital. We really aren’t. We do very complex cases. We’re very proud to offer them to our families so they don’t have to leave the area.”

From the admitting lobby, tour guests come up to the second-floor new waiting area. A natural starting place is the three-area waiting room decorated in nature-inspired colors.

Earth tones and natural describe the decorating throughout the facility, Wangerin said.

“We were trying for something a little more timeless that isn’t going to outdate but is still soothing,” she said.

The hallway leading out of the waiting area and those throughout the building feature creative work from paintings to ceramic wall hangings from mostly local artists. A right turn in the middle of the hallway takes visitors to an intersection of the same-day surgery beds, the endoscopy procedure rooms and the operating room area.

According to Wangerin, 99 percent of the traffic will head for same-day surgery. 

“This is where they will start their journey,” she said.

After checking in, a patient would settle into one of four pods of same-day surgery patient rooms. The  area has 18 rooms, three nurses’ stations, numerous physician dictating areas and restrooms for each of the four pods. 

This replaces a long open room with curtains separating patients in the old area. 

“Each patient has a private room, so that will be very, very nice,” Wangerin said.

Across the hall from the same-day surgery rooms, guests may tour the new endoscopy area with two procedure rooms and one for X-ray equipment for procedures that combine endoscopic and X-ray examinations.

Wangerin said the area grew to include an isolation room and 18 beds.

Next on the tour, Wangerin led the way to the front desk holding area for the operating room. She said her scheduler, charge nurses and data-entry person will all have more space while she has a nice office where she can keep track of everyone coming in and going out of the operating rooms. 

“Here we have four bays for in-patients,” she said. “These are much bigger, and we put a solid wall in between them so when the anesthesiologist or nurse comes out to talk with them, the person right next to you isn’t hearing every word that is being said.”

From the holding area, Wangerin opened the doors crossing what medical staff call the “red line” into the sterile-only operating room corridor and then into the largest heart operating room. 

“There are lots of monitors for everything and the booms for the equipment to go on,” she said. “We’re trying to get the equipment up off the floor to not have so many cords to walk around. A little better safety and ergonomics.”

Oliverson added that allows staff to more quickly clean the room without so many obstacles. The level of sanitation required to ensure patient safety boggles the mind.

“Every morning every horizontal surface is wiped down whether it is being used or not,” Wangerin said. 

She said surgeons can perform any procedure in every operating suite except heart procedures, which may be performed in two of the operating rooms. The primary heart procedure operating room consumes more than 1,000 square feet.

Rooms feature new operating beds that slide and tilt to accommodate every need and special lights designed to allow surgeons to see even with their head over the patient, solving an age-old problem.

“These are all LED, so less heat, which is nice,” Wangerin said. “Usually, whatever temperature the room is, when you get gowned and gloved under the lights, you can plan on it being 10 degrees warmer.”

 Several rooms accommodate the da Vinci robot. Even the secondary heart room has the infrastructure to handle the robot, anticipating surgeon needs in the future. 

Along with the eight operating rooms and a urology procedure room, the  area behind the red line has space to add four more suites if needed. The building also has a third floor shelled in for the future.

Reflecting on the long process, Wangerin said the final product was worth all the hard work put in by the staff and administration.

“I’ve got a rep who said she calls on all major hospitals west of the Mississippi,” Wangerin said. “She said, ‘I haven’t seen one compares to this.’ It’s a beautiful facility.”

Reporter Candace Chase may be reached at 758-4436 or by email at cchase@dailyinterlake.com.