As part of Peninsula Regional Medical Center’s $100 million expansion project, the new Layfield Tower is the largest structure being built or renovated at 168,000 square feet.
Today, PRMC officially dedicates the new patient care facility, named in honor of former president Virginia B. Layfield, a Salisbury resident who provided nursing and executive leadership at the hospital for nearly 44 years.

“(Layfield) is a fantastic person,” said Karen Poisker, vice president of patient care services and a registered nurse with more than three decades of service at PRMC. “She’s the premier female leader in this state — certainly in health care.”

On Tuesday, PRMC will open a new 24-bed intensive care unit on the second floor of the Layfield Tower that will increase the total number of critical care beds from 33 to 42, said Peggy Naleppa, executive vice president and chief operating officer.

The Layfield Tower allows the hospital to improve the overall patient care experience, said Nancy Flurer, director of medical/surgical units.

“The team, including physicians and nurses, will be able to provide a higher level of care and have the ability to sub-specialize that care to the need of each patient,” Flurer said.

The Layfield Tower, which has been housing patients since early July, opened up more than 80 new, larger private rooms, Poisker said. The facility also lessens the need for patients to be moved once they’re placed in a room that is specially equipped with the medical technology required for their care.

PRMC clinical staff, who work exclusively in those areas, can centralize patients in a condition-specific unit even during times of high occupancy, she said.

“Limiting room changes and handoffs among clinicians also improves patient and medication safety,” Poisker said. “For visitors, single-patient rooms provide families the space they need for privacy and to spend quality time with their loved ones.”

Bruce Patterson, director of facilities management, said patients in single rooms decreases the risk of possible cross infection.

The Layfield Tower has a third floor that features a 30-bed cardiac, thoracic and vascular surgical step-down unit and a fifth floor filled with a 30-bed neurosciences and stroke unit, said Roger Follebout, spokesman.

Patients cared for in other parts of the hospital will start to notice a gradual increase in private rooms, which will be created when units relocate to the Layfield Tower, Follebout said.

“Semi-private rooms in the existing medical center are now being renovated to single-patient, private rooms throughout the facility,” he said.

An example of this, is the move of the medical center’s pediatric unit to the first floor of the Layfield Tower in April, Poisker said.

“That provides space in the old pediatric unit for us to now create a total of 24 private mother/baby rooms for our post-partum moms,” she said.