Stephens County Hospital Upgrading and Expanding Sleep Lab

Stephens County Hospital is in the process of upgrading its sleep lab to better help patients.

At their meeting Monday, the Hospital Authority Board approved the purchase of new equipment and redesign of the hospital’s sleep lab.

Jim Halsey is the Respiratory Therapist for Stephens County Hospital is a registered respiratory therapist.

He said the Sleep Lab is used to diagnose patients with conditions such as sleep apnea to help determine what is preventing them from getting a good night’s rest.

Halsey says while the current equipment and sleep room are adequate, there is a need to update in order to better serve more patients, more quickly.

One area to be streamlined is the room where the computers and equipment for the sleep study are housed.

“We’ve been using this (equipment) room for a long time now, and like anything else, we’ve done one upgrade to our older sleep stuff and computers get to be 10-12 years old and they start not working right. So, we’re in the process of upgrading to a new system,” he explained.

That new system will replace the old computers and other equipment with new ones and will be housed in a different location.

Another issue according to Halsey is the need to add more sleep rooms.

“This is our current room . It’s kind of small and it’s kind of noisy because we’re the first take-off from the air handler up on the roof. We don’t have piped-in O2 and there are just difficulties with this,” Halsey said.

Halsey then showed WNEG News the sleep lab area, which will consist of two separate bedrooms with their own adjoining bathrooms.

“It’s a lot nicer, it’s a lot quieter, it’s a lot larger. We have better temperature control and we have built-in oxygen if we should need it without it having to be in a tank,” Halsey explained. “Now we will have sleep technician station here with two systems on it. And next door we’ll have the two rooms with the sleep labs.”

Workers are in the process of installing all of the cabling needed to monitor sleep patients.

Additionally, the Hospital has hired an extra sleep lab technician who will monitor patients from a new area next to the two new sleep rooms, Halsey says will allow them to schedule more tests.

“Now instead of having one person come at a time, we’ll have two people here, which will decrease our downtime to maybe a week and a half. We ‘re also expanding the number of days a week that we’ll be functional. We’re actually training a new sleep technician which will enable us to be open seven days a week,” he said.

Halsey told the Board Monday the new equipment and expanded services should increase revenue by about 20%.

Total cost for the expansion and replacement of equipment he said is about $30,000, which he said is included in the current hospital fiscal budget.