MultiCare Good Samaritan Hospital opens two new floors to increase care and services for growing region

By MultiCare Health System

MultiCare Good Samaritan Hospital opens two new floors in the Dally Tower Oct. 23 in an expansion that will help the hospital increase health care services for the growing region.

When the eight-story tower opened in 2011, the 7th and 8th floors were left unfinished to provide for future growth. By 2015, the need for care at Good Samaritan had grown enough that it became clear those two floors were necessary to meet the needs of the community.

“As we deliver on our goal of becoming the trusted medical provider of choice for every resident of East Pierce County, we need more beds in our hospital to keep up the number of people coming to us for care,” says Chris Bredeson, Good Samaritan Hospital President and COO. “We have had tremendous support from the community over the years and are pleased that we are able to expand to make sure our community can remain close to home when hospitalization is needed.”

The floors add 40 beds in a new post-surgical unit on the 7th floor, along with another 40 in a new Progressive Care Unit on the 8th floor. The expansion will also allow existing spaces to be repurposed to enhance care in a number of areas:

• In 2019 a new, 18-bed obstetric addiction inpatient unit will be created to bring previously unavailable care to the South Sound for mothers-to-be who are struggling with addiction. This is a highly relevant service that addresses one of the nation’s largest public health challenges, and Good Samaritan will be the first facility in the South Sound to provide it to this at-risk population.
• The Pulse Heart Institute Critical Care Unit (currently in the tower) will expand from 33 beds to 40 private rooms, some of which will operate as cardiac Intensive Care Unit-level beds.
• The current ICU will expand into the space vacated by Pulse and provide additional critical care beds (increasing from 14 to 22).
• The hospital will add 23 additional beds in the highly regarded Inpatient Rehabilitation Program.

To improve on the original blueprints, which dated back nearly a decade, the design of the two new floors included significant input from the staff who will work in them. MultiCare and its longtime design partners from Clark/Kjos Architects used this as an opportunity for collaboration and employee engagement by leveraging experience to optimize the new design.

“The idea is to be closer to our focus, which is the patient,” says Janine Sanderson, RN, manager of critical care at Good Samaritan.

Functionality for patients and visitors was another priority, leading to a locker for securing personal items and an out-of-the-way shelf to hold flowers and cards. The visitor areas in the rooms received fold-down tables and additional power sockets were added for convenience.

As Puyallup’s only hospital, Good Samaritan serves as an acute care hub for a large and diverse community across Puyallup and East Pierce County.

Good Samaritan offers comprehensive inpatient and outpatient health care services, including a Family Birth Center, Children’s Therapy Unit, a 24-hour Emergency Department and pharmacy, MultiCare Regional Cancer Center, mental health program, surgical services and more. The hospital’s Emergency Department is not only the busiest out of MultiCare’s hospitals, but it also has some of the highest patient volumes in the state.

More than 1,600 providers, specialists and employees work on the campus, which serves as a health care hub for more than 300,000 residents of east Pierce County.

Learn more about the design process for the new floors

Learn more about MultiCare Good Samaritan Hospital