Tour to the newest addition in the burgeoning medical corridor in Butler County: the Christ Hospital Medical Center-Liberty Township. Anne Saker/The Enquirer
The medical corridor of Interstate 75 through Butler County gained a new occupant with the Jan. 8 ribbon-cutting for the Christ Hospital Medical Center-Liberty Township. I took a tour this week, and here are five things I learned about the place.
1) Having a C-section? Now the whole family can be there.
Because of Butler County's birth rate, the hospital sank money into its Family Birthing Center. The key innovation, which hospital officials say is a first for the region, is a cesarian section viewing room, which allows more family and friends to be present at that special moment. Most hospitals limit the number of family members at a C-section delivery, but that was “one of the main dissatisfactions” that moms told hospital officials, labor-and-delivery nurse Ashley Reid. The new hospital put in a viewing room that can comfortably seat nine people to cheer on a birth. The room’s windows have blinds that are opened only when the mother is gowned and ready to deliver. You don’t see the incision, but you do see the baby being born.
The viewing room saw its first birth Monday. Bill and Caitlin Radjewski live in Liberty Township, and every day for more than a year, they watched the hospital’s construction. On Jan. 15, a week after the hospital opened, Caitlin delivered the couple’s second daughter there by C-section, with sister Gemma, 5, and other relatives in the viewing room. Then a member of the delivery team held a piece of paper for the witnesses to learn the baby’s name: Maria Joyce.
2) Giving birth? Make yourself at home. New moms told hospital planners that they want families to stay together for a birth. Each of the nine labor-and-delivery rooms allows a woman and her family to dwell in one place while she gives birth and recovers with baby at hand. The double-sized rooms have kitchenettes, spa-like bathrooms with jumbo showers and “smart” boards low enough for kids to draw. Room cabinets can be restocked from the hallway so as not to disturb sleeping families.
3) Christ Hospital’s great leap forward. The 25-bed hospital is the latest facility in the Mount Auburn-based system’s expansion into Cincinnati's suburbs. In 2012, the network opened two more outpatient centers in Green Township and Fort Wright; in 2015 came an outpatient center in Montgomery. Also in 2015, the system opened the Joint and Spine Center at the main hospital in Cincinnati, which appeared in the 2016 movie, “The Killing of a Sacred Deer.” Further expansion is aimed at Fort Mitchell, where Christ battled wtih St. Elizabeth Healthcare to win Kentucky state approval to build.
4) Butler County's medical building boom. The Liberty Township hospital plants a flag for Christ Hospital in the county. UC Health’s West Chester Hospital, 1.5 miles due south on Cox Road, only three years ago reconfigured its third floor as a maternity space. The Liberty Campus of Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, just west across I-75, operates one of the nation’s 25 proton-radiation centers. Four miles southwest is TriHealth’s Bethesda Butler Hospital, which finished an expansion in 2016. TriHealth plans to build an outpatient center on land it owns on the corner of Cox Road and Liberty Way, half a mile from the new Christ Hospital.
5) That's a nice design touch. A wall of northeast-facing windows fills the lobby with light even under a leaden January sky. From outside the hospital, the windows display a line drawing of the landmark tower that crowns Christ Hospital’s main campus.