Work on the facilities is officially over, but the facilities’work has only just begun.

The layers of glass and technology that comprise the newemergency and intensive care departments at King’s DaughtersMedical Center have produced not only space and stature for therural hospital, but volume and revenue as well. Even aspoliticians, administrators and supporters gathered in the coldWednesday to officially designate the departments, already thosestructures are helping solidify KDMC’s tomorrow.

“After the year we just finished, the hospital is geared to besuccessful and exceed our budgets for the year,” said Randy Pirtle,KDMC’s chief financial officer.

Since the state-of-the-art ER was completed in the last phase ofconstruction on the $14 million project last April, emergency roomvolume has increased 23 percent over the previous year, Pirtlesaid. With around one-tenth of ER patients admitted to the hospitalfor extended treatment, that bump in volume has led to a 9 percentincrease in admissions since the same point in 2009, a differenceof 56 additional patients, he said.

The new ER has helped spur the financial growth in part by itssize and structure, with bigger, more accommodating rooms that havelowered wait times and speeded up the delivery of treatment.

“That’s an important factor for us. It creates additionalrevenue and helps the hospital grow and carry our mission,” Pirtlesaid.

Some of that revenue has been put back into the hospital to hirenew employees, a workforce expansion necessary to handle the newvolume, said KDMC Chief Executive Officer Alvin Hoover. The newfacilities have somewhat of a circular effect, he said – the former40-year-old ER and ICU had to be expanded to accommodate increasedvolume, and the sizeable new facilities have allowed excess volumeto be accommodated.

KDMC has experienced a complete turnaround from a year ago, whena sour year’s end in 2008 forced layoffs and restructuring early in2009. Now, the massive expansion project is completed and beginningto pay for itself, and already more renovations are beingplanned.

Renovations in the LDRP (labor/delivery/recovery/postpartum)department are ongoing, and more departments surrounding the newfacilities will be gutted and rebuilt slowly over the coming years,Hoover said. Highest on the priority list now is the hospitallaboratory, he said, which is also part of the last KDMC rebuild inthe 1960s.

Perhaps the greatest mark the new ER and ICU are making on thehospital is in the recruiting arena, however.

KDMC Chief Development Officer Johnny Rainer said the hospital’sphysician recruiting efforts have seen noticeable gains since thenew departments came online. He said several physicians beingsought after by the hospital have remarked positively on the newdepartments, and a handful of current prospects who will finishtheir training and begin practicing within the next two years maybe tipped toward KDMC by the facilities, which are among the finestin the state.

Rainer held up a list of recruiting targets and placedcheckmarks by three names. Though restricted by the confidentialityof the recruiting process, he indicated the marked physicians hadexpressed interest in signing on at Brookhaven after touring thenew departments.

“If you have good facilities, you can get good physicians andprovide good health care. If you don’t have good facilities, it’sgoing to be very difficult to recruit good doctors and providequality health care,” Rainer said. “When you bring people in andyou show them a new ER and ICU, it makes an impression.”

The hospital’s robust abilities also have the potential toimpact more aspects of Lincoln County life than just health care.Lincoln County Board of Supervisors President Doug Moak said themodern facilities would help local economic developers lureprospective industries.

“When a new business comes to look at our area, they look at ourquality of life, our education system and of course our medicalfacilities,” he said at the dedication ceremony Wednesday. “Iappreciate KDMC having the foresight to build a facility likethis.”

Mary Lu Redd, chairman of the KDMC Board of Trustees, saidplanning for the ER and ICU expansion began almost four years agoand was based on two factors – necessity and desire.

“We had outgrown our facilities, and we wanted to do this forthe community,” she said. “We want to provide a good service forBrookhaven and the entire area of Southwest Mississippi.”