Bon Secours Richmond Health System is making health care more accessible than ever in Henrico County for the entire Richmond region.
A giant banner draped on the Glenside Drive side of a handsome new building proudly proclaims that Bon Secours is opening a Heart Institute there in 2008.
The Heart Institute—with its own MRI and CT scanners, fitness center, cardiology team, and cardiac rehab and education center—will work to keep healthy people well, and also to help sick people get better. The facility will offer other medical services, including an urgent care center.
The new campus at the Heart Institute site also will house medical practices such as dermatology and internal medicine. Some physicians began seeing patients there this summer. Good health and wellness permeate the place, including a heart-healthy café, cooking classes, and dietary assistance.
The multi-dimensional facility is just one of four new major Bon Secours building initiatives in Henrico County. Three projects are under way, and one was just completed.
Nearby, a second building project is completed. The Bon Secours Cancer Institute and Neurosciences Institute is located on the former headquarters site of Reynolds Metals Co. off Broad Street near Interstate 64. The Reynolds Crossing Campus is considered an extension of nearby St. Mary’s Hospital at Monu ment and Libbie avenues.
The Cancer Institute was recently expanded to include both cancer treatment and a wellness and edu- cation center. The same building includes the Neurosciences Center, with neuro-rehab, pain management, a sleep lab, and the Cullather Brain Tumor Quality of Life Center.
Bon Secours’ third major Henrico building project is in the east end of the county on Laburnum Avenue. Here the Laburnum Medical Center will be replaced with a large medical office building similar to the Heart Institute.
The fourth and final building project is the former Ukrop’s supermarket on Patterson Avenue near Gaskins Road. An urgent care service will be available there, along with imaging and physicians’ offices.
Bon Secours’ expansion is part of the natural evolution of modern hospitals, observers say. “A hospital is no longer just four walls and a bunch of beds,” says Katherine Webb, senior vice president of the Virginia Hospital and Health Care Association.
Bon Secours’ growth in Henrico is testimony to the trend of moving care out of the hospital while providing other forms of care. As a result, Webb says, “More complex patients are in the hospital. At the end of the day, this is better for everyone.”
Technological advances in health care delivery allow hospitals to do more things on an outpatient basis. “The patient is well-served,” says Webb.
Michael Spine, senior vice president for planning and marketing for Bon Secours, describes this new direction in medicine as “episodic” and one that takes aim at “chronicity.” Convenient and accessible health care facilities encourage keeping people healthy instead of just waiting for “episodes” of illness, Spine explains. Such preventive health care helps eliminate “chronicity”—that is, longterm chronic illness.
As the U.S. population ages, Spine says, health care that seeks to prevent or reduce illness, especially long-term illness, becomes increasingly important.
