Fairfield Hospital District board members took their first look at a draft floorplan that will almost entirely remodel the hospital.

The remodeling is a project of East Texas Medical Center which leases the facility from the district.

ETMC is able to finance the remodeling since FHD began paying the unpaid portion of treating indigent patients.

"Everything here is still a work in progress," ETMC Fairfield administrator Raz Cook says.

The project consists of three major parts, enlarging the emergency room area, remodeling existing patient rooms and adding a new wing of rooms, and refurbishing the clinic adjoining the hospital for physician use.

Three floorplans for work on patient rooms were shown by Mrs. Cook to FHD board members. Differences in the three plans is the location of the nurs- es' station.

The new wing of 10 rooms will be built on the north end of the hospital, perpendicular to existing patient rooms.

Existing rooms are to be gutted and reconfigured into larger spaces, but with fewer rooms.

Altogether, the hospital will contain 30 patient rooms when the project is complete.

The emergency room area will be expanded into space now occupied by medical records and a new waiting room will be built.

One bed in the trauma room is to be removed, leaving two, but private treatment rooms are to be added for a total of eight rooms, two more than the hospital currently has in the area.

FHD board chairman Monte Cole expresses that he would like to add another two treatment rooms to allow for growth.

Mrs. Cook reports that an average of 680 patients are seen monthly in the emergency room, but that number jumped to 800 in October becuase of the H1N1 virus scare.

To accommodate work in the main part of the hospital, administrative offices and the medical records department are to be moved.

The draft plan also shows the clinic adjoining the hospital turned into regular doctors' offices.

ETMC plans are to move general pratitioners now at First Physicians Clinic into the area adjoining the hospital, and house specialists at the First Physicians facility.

Input from ETMC Fairfield staff will be sought before a final set of plans is drawn.

Mrs. Cook reports that ETMC would like to start construction in spring 2010 to enlarge the emergency room area.

FHD directors tabled making a decision to increase the per patient limit for treatment of indigent patients who live inside district boundaries.

The district currently budgets a maximum of $5,000 per patient annually for indigent care.

"The state would like to see it as high as we can afford," FHD administrative assistant Larry Ivy says.

Freestone county set its limit at $30,000 per patient annually for indigent care, covering only indigent patients who live in the county but outside a hospital distict.

"I think we should leave the limit where it is. People are still going to get the care from ETMC," Cole says.

"Rather than increase our limit we should put money in UPL," he adds.

UPL is the federal government program which gives a 30 percent return on money deposited with it by a hospital district. Investment in UPL allows a district to stretch its money.

In other business, the board voted to move FHD director elections from May until November, starting in 2010.

The move combines the FHS vote with the general election held in November and cuts election costs.