Covenant Health System is a major regional referral center, drawing 55 percent of its patients from outside Lubbock County. The state's fifth largest health care organization serves a 62-county area across West Texas and Eastern New Mexico.
Pediatrics treatment, including pediatric oncology, pediatric trauma, and pediatric intensive care, draws patients from throughout the region. Patients also travel to Lubbock for adult trauma and neurosurgery treatment, as well as for treatment at the Joe Arrington Cancer Research and Treatment Center and Covenant Heart Center, the region's only free-standing heart facility.
Covenant, owned by St. Joseph Health System in Calif., has been ranked among the top 100 hospitals nationwide recognized by HCIA/Sachs, a national group that evaluates all the hospitals in the country based on Medicare data, with cost-efficiency and quality as baselines.
To better accommodate its emergency room patients, Covenant Health System is currently expanding and renovating its adult emergency room at Covenant Medical Center. The $4.26 million construction is part of a three-phase project that also will include renovation of Covenant Medical Center's operating room and radiology facilities.
The expansion and renovations to the emergency room at Covenant Medical Center began in May 2000 and are expected to be completed by October 2002. An additional 15,000 square feet is being added to the existing facility, which is 9,630 square feet and was constructed in 1986. The new 45-bed emergency room will feature an Urgent Care Center with 10 treatment and exam rooms and a four-room Trauma Center, with separate nursing units for each area.
In August 2001, Covenant Health System also added state-of-the-art Electron Beam Tomography to its arsenal of diagnostic weapons. Electron Beam Tomography is an innovative imaging system for diagnosing cardiac conditions and is considered to be up to 10 times faster than conventional computed tomography.
Charles L. Ehrenfeld can be contacted at 766-8796 or [email protected]
