Olathe Medical Center, a five-story acute care medical center located in Olathe, Kansas, opened a 105,000-square-foot, four-story obstetrics wing, called The Birth Place. The new tower is equipped with a level II neonatal intensive care unit.

The NICU unit, located on the second floor, features seven single-family rooms with room to add seven additional single-family rooms in the future. Four “pods” are available for higher acuity babies. The labor and delivery area, located on the third floor, offers 15 new LDR rooms, two cesarean operating rooms and three recovery rooms. The fourth floor houses the postpartum unit and a well-baby nursery. There are currently 20 postpartum rooms with the ability to expand to 27. Each room has a queen-size Murphy bed and most rooms have oversized jetted bath tubs. In addition, the NICU and postpartum floors each have an outside balcony and a family lounge that offers a kitchen and TV area.

The new tower provides flexibility for future growth. The hospital can potentially add four more floors vertically or one whole bay horizontally. On two levels, there is shell space to allow for additional patient rooms as needed in the future.

HMN Architects Inc. partnered with Olathe Health on the project.