St. Tammany Parish Hospital, located in Covington, La., recently filed plans for the Sept. 18 Covington Planning and Zoning Commission meeting to reveal expansion plans for a phased construction project beginning this fall.

St. Tammany Parish Hospital worked with FL+WB Architects and OptimaLogix Consultants to develop a master facilities plan to steer strategic direction for the next five to 15 years. The resulting plan centers on increased capacity for private rooms, parking, critical care, obstetrics, interventional cardiology, imaging and surgery.

The patient care space will increase private patient rooms for critical care at the main hospital, and parking will be added. After parking phases are complete, the project will focus on building flexibility for future use and eventual repurposing of the oldest structures in the main hospital away from patient use and to nonclinical care space.

To address patient privacy, expansion will eliminate some semiprivate rooms. The hospital has added units of all private rooms repeatedly in the past three expansion projects and remains committed to building new private-room units going forward. As new units of private suites are put into use caring for patients, hospital construction teams will retrofit older units of semi-private rooms, ultimately emphasizing private-room environments for inpatients. Analysis of the bed need reveals a growth trajectory through 2030, rounding out around 245 beds in the 12-year projection.