After nearly 20 years of providing top quality, award-winning medical care to patients and their families in Southwest Broward County, Memorial Hospital West is now marking the completion of a major expansion. A new two-story main entrance, 40 additional medical/surgical/telemetry beds and a 40-bed dedicated oncology floor are the key developments.“Community residents have trusted us with their care for almost two decades,” said Ken Hetlage, administrator, Memorial Hospital West in Pembroke Pines. “We’re so pleased to offer these enhancements. They clearly demonstrate our unwavering commitment to improving the health of our community.”
Hetlage pointed out that the addition of these inpatient beds will assist in expediting Memorial Hospital West emergency department patients who need to be admitted to the hospital.
Throughout the expansion, light-colored wood, calming colors like moss green and ocean blue and spacious, light-emitting windows brings a welcoming, homelike setting to the new patient areas. In the blood and marrow transplant (BMT) unit, the private patient rooms have been designed with specialized infection control equipment to meet the needs of a wide range of immune-suppressed patients.
“Thanks to the expansion, Broward County patients diagnosed with leukemia, lymphoma, myeloma and other blood cancers will now be able to receive comprehensive treatment closer to home,” said Dr. Lyle Feinstein, medical director of the Blood and Marrow Transplant program.
Since 2007, Dr. Feinstein and his team have enhanced the lives of dozens of transplant patients in the Memorial Cancer Institute’s outpatient BMT program.
With this new unit, autologous transplants—using the patient’s own blood stem cells–can be performed both inpatient and outpatient, depending on the severity of the illness. In the near future, allogeneic transplants—using blood stem cells from sibling or unrelated donors and donated umbilical cord blood—will be performed in the Memorial Hospital West BMT unit.
Dr. Feinstein explained, “The new inpatient unit will make it possible to provide this complex, life-saving care right here in our community. Families will be able to stay in their homes, keep their jobs, keep children in school, and still support loved ones throughout their treatment.”