CEO Update: Expanding ICU care

CEO Update
• 22 October 2025

Progress continues toward opening our new hospital expansion in March 2026 at Citizens Memorial Hospital. One of the new spaces in the expansion is our Intensive Care Unit (ICU).

Our nurse manager for the ICU, Courtney Boland, and one of our hospitalists, Garrett Alderfer, M.D., joined me to talk about the new ICU space.

The current hospital has eight ICU beds and eight Progressive Care Unit (PCU) beds. The PCU is a step-down unit from the ICU to the Medical/Surgical Unit. Coming soon, in the new expansion, we’re going to have 16 ICU-capable rooms.

Additionally, all of our beds on the inpatient floor are going to be monitored beds. It really gives us an opportunity to be more flexible and grow.

Continue reading or watch the video to learn more about:

• The role hospitalists play in critical care
• Current ICU capacity
• What the staff are most excited about in the ICU expansion

Hospitalists’ role in critical care

Calhoun: Dr. Alderfer, tell me about what a hospitalist does and what your role is.

Alderfer: The model is for a provider who only sees patients at the hospital. I don’t have a clinic. I don’t carry primary care patients. In that role, I am in the hospital for my entire shift. My role is to help navigate people through the admission process, in-hospital care and then work on discharge planning to successfully hand them back to their primary care provider for ongoing care.

We have what’s called an open ICU model here at CMH. My team and I care for patients across the spectrum from the Emergency Room to the ICU, to our step-down unit, to Med/Surg, and follow them throughout their entire hospital course.

ICU at capacity

Boland: We have been seeing every bed nearly full here as of late. We don’t have less than eight patients at a given time.

Calhoun: One of the things that we noticed as we’ve been looking at the census is that ICU and PCU are oftentimes at capacity or beyond capacity. So it’s an exciting time for us to be expanding our ICU services.

What the staff is looking forward to in the expansion

Calhoun: As we think about our ICU rooms and the things that we’re going to be providing to our patients, what are some of the things you’re most excited about with the expansion?

Boland: I’m most excited about having a larger room for some in-the-ceiling lifts, some new beds and then the integrated call light system that will allow us to have a light that indicates when a nurse or a tech is in the room with the patient and allows other staff to see who is in there with that patient.

Calhoun: Our rooms are quite a bit bigger in the expansion, and one of the features is that we have restrooms in each one of the rooms. It gives the ability for patients to be more flexible as they are in the hospital setting.

Not only are we building new rooms, but we’re going to have a new complement of technology in the rooms. One of the things I’m really excited about is being able to elevate who we’re able to keep here at the hospital. When patients go to other communities and they’ve sought care here first, it’s really inconvenient for them. One thing we’re going to be able to do is keep more people close to home.

Alderfer: Our ICU is representative of the highest levels of medical care a patient may need. We currently offer great ICU care. We have a great mixture of experienced and young nurses who have seen the gamut of patient illnesses. Moving into the new building, we’re going to be able to work in larger spaces.

We’re going to be able to accommodate those patients even better than we do now, and we’ll be able to bring on new service lines that will allow us to take care of sicker patients, ones we’ve traditionally not kept here at CMH, and to hopefully allow for patients and families to remain in the community for their care, rather than necessarily being transferred to a larger hospital.

The new ICU is going to bring about a wealth of new technology that will be able to utilize. The most exciting part for me right now is our agreement to start, with a tele-intensivist program, to have intensivists, or ICU doctors, on call or available to help the hospitalists 24/7. They will be able to remotely see, monitor and help us manage patients who are beyond perhaps the traditional hospitalist scope of practice.

In addition to that, being able to then bring on new service lines, whether that’s through our pulmonary critical care program, nephrology program or cardiology program. There are patients that we’ve traditionally not kept at CMH that we will start to be able to. That will be great for the patients and for the community.

Calhoun: Courtney, is there anything the ICU staff members have told you that they’re really looking forward to with the expansion?

Boland: They’re looking forward to more computers and more desks where they can sit or stand. Currently, we just have the one little ICU desk. The expansion will have a desk between every two rooms. They are really excited about that. And the respiratory therapists are really excited to have their own place in our area.

Calhoun: When patients need ICU care, it is a really hard time for the family and for the patient. I know and have confidence every time we have a patient here in the ICU, they’re getting the best care. Thanks to your team for the great care we provide here in the ICU.

Michael Calhoun shares the latest happenings at CMH in his monthly CEO Updates. He is the CEO/executive director of CMH and the Citizens Memorial Health Care Foundation.