Hospital 'topping off' party planned

MAT-SU -- Valley Hospital will mark off a milestone next Friday when it hosts a "topping off" ceremony to celebrate the highest beam being swung into place on its new hospital.

The ceremony is scheduled from noon to 1 p.m. Dec. 3, with a sandwich lunch to follow at the nearby Mat-Su Convention and Visitors Bureau.

According to information gathered from a range of sources, the "topping off" ceremony was started hundreds of years ago when Scandinavians placed sheaves of grain atop newly built halls. The grain was for Norse god Odin's horse, Slepnir.

According to legend, the act so impressed Odin that he blessed the hall's occupants with good luck. Later, in many areas, evergreen trees were substituted for the sheaves of grain and, in America, the American flag is often given a place of honor on the final beam as well.

Although the ceremony conveys good luck, it also celebrates the safe completion of the structural steel portion of the building.

Elizabeth Ripley, director of marketing and public relations for Valley Hospital, said the construction is coming along ahead of schedule, despite delays early on.

"It really looks like a hospital already," Ripley said.

Ripley said one of the early snags in the project required more dirt work than originally planned for. A lake that had apparently been filled in on the property, Ripley said, had to be excavated because the fill was not as stable as the surrounding ground would be during an earthquake. While that work was done, other areas of the project were completed before their targeted completion date and, as a result, the tentative opening date has been moved up from May to January 2006.

The key, Ripley said, is to complete the shelling-in process -- to get the construction to a point that work can continue on the project despite winter weather. That milestone should be reached by the end of the year. From there, Ripley said, work can progress rapidly.

While work has been progressing on the building, a lot of other work must be done before the building is complete to ensure the staff is ready to go when the new hospital opens.

One goal hospital staff have been working diligently on, Ripley said, is expanding the number of active staff, or medical staff who have active privileges at the hospital and who live within 30 minutes of the facility. So far, she said, 71 active medical staff members are ready. That's up from 32 in 1992, 35 in 1997 and 52 in 2002.

"That's higher than it's ever been," Ripley said, adding that the number will be going higher still before the hospital is open. The staff goal is to recruit 22 new medical staff members in 2005.

Recruitment is about more than simply getting doctors or surgeons signed on with the hospital, Ripley said. While a few spots remain open for medical physicians and medical staff who specialize in pediatrics, many of the positions hospital staff are still recruiting for

are more specialized.

One specialist recently recruited, Ripley said, is a neurologist who specializes in epilepsy treatment.

"To have that expertise in the Valley is really valuable," Ripley said.

Oncologists, gastroenterologists and others are currently being courted, but one of the most aggressive areas of recruitment going on right now is aimed at securing cardiologists.

"One of the big pieces is to ensure that the cath lab … comes online at the same time as the hospital," Ripley said. "Right now, there are no cardiologists on the active medical staff. We're working with the Alaska Heart Institute to recruit two to three staff full time in the Valley."

Ripley said opening the cath lab, or cardiac catheterization laboratory, is something that was initially scheduled to happen after the hospital was up and running. Hospital staff, she said, have rethought that decision, and paperwork has been submitted to the state certificate of need office to request an earlier opening of the lab.

"The justification is, we are transporting quite a large number of folks due to acute myocardial infarctions or heart attacks," Ripley said. "We could really raise the standard of care."

Ripley said adding a cath lab wouldn't mean the hospital would be equipped to perform open-heart surgery, but it would allow patients who can be treated with less-invasive treatments to remain at Valley Hospital.

"It's really about access, and increasing access for our patients," Ripley said.

Contact Rindi White at rindi.white@frontiersman.com.