By Andrew West

DOVER — Our neighbors, especially those in Sussex County, are growing older and demanding more from the area’s health care system.

It has led to an ongoing wave of construction and expansion, recruitment and retention efforts, and continual improvements in efficiencies, said Terry Murphy, president and CEO of Bayhealth.

“We have to be thinking of an aging and sicker population coming down the road 20 years from now,” he said. “I find myself thinking of Indiana Jones with the boulder coming behind me.”

Mr. Murphy recently shared the big picture for Bayhealth, a not-for-profit system, in an interview with the Daily State News.

Last year, Bayhealth physicians in Sussex and Kent counties had 188,000 patient visits, the CEO said. That number will keep rising.

“We’re trying to make sure that we stay ahead of what’s coming down the road, and sometimes, people don’t think far enough in advance,” said Mr. Murphy. “Demand is out the roof. And, as people get diagnosed earlier with things, that just means you have to be ready.

“Unfortunately, we’re not the healthiest state, and we’re not getting younger as a state.”

Consider this: In Sussex County, which has been a beacon for retirees, 28% of the population is now older than 65.

More than 230,000 people live in Sussex. From 2010-20, the census shows that the county’s number of residents grew by 20%.

Also consider these statistics: 9.7% of the Sussex adult population is affected by cancer, and about 13% of adults in the county are living with diabetes, according to the state’s public health website, My Healthy Community.

“All those things just mean that there’s more stress on health care,” Mr. Murphy said. “We’re really working hard to make sure we don’t get behind that boulder.”

Building boom

Construction is one of the most visible signs of the demand.

Situated on the south side of Milford, the six-story Bayhealth Sussex hospital, a $314 million investment, is the centerpiece of Bayhealth’s Sussex Campus. The inpatient hospital and emergency department opened in 2019.

Since then, there have been moves to fill other needs.

PAM Health will soon open a 74,000-square-foot facility on the campus. The post-acute recovery specialist also partners with Bayhealth in Dover and Georgetown.

Last month, Bayhealth received approval to add 40 medical/surgical beds and six intensive care unit beds to the hospital. In its application before the Delaware Health Resources Board, Bayhealth noted that its service area population is expected to grow by 6% from 2022-27.

Additionally, Bayhealth said Sussex campus admissions grew by 14% and patient days by 67% from fiscal year 2019-22.

At Bayhealth’s Kent Campus in Dover, there was a $147 million expansion completed in 2012. It included an expanded emergency department, integrated cancer center and a 375-space parking garage.

In 2006, in the first phase of a master plan, four floors were added to that existing building. The fourth was shelled in, with growth of the pavilion in mind, architects explained.

“We want to add anywhere from four to six stories going vertical,” said Mr. Murphy. “It is going to change this campus tremendously.”

In July, Bayhealth notified the Delaware Health Resources Board with intent for review of the plan to add six stories to the pavilion and to add 12 beds to the ICU. The projected cost is $100 million.

The ICU expansion will be adjacent to the current space. The plan includes moving intermediate care beds into one of the new floors.

The target for completion is 2027.

Vertical growth has proven to be a more efficient way to operate a hospital, Mr. Murphy said.

Like the Milford location, Bayhealth plans to have only private rooms for patients.

“We still have semiprivate rooms (in Dover),” he said. “We know that that’s not really the best way to deliver care. It’s not patient-centered. That may have been good in 1970 or 1960, but we don’t really find a place for that (in) today’s health care.”

Ribbon cuttings

Bayhealth has been in the headlines for other openings in the past year:

• Harrington — In January, Bayhealth Primary Care and the Bayhealth Outpatient Center along U.S. 13. The facility has primary care physicians, a lab and an X-ray facility.
• Near Milton — In July, Bayhealth celebrated the grand opening of an emergency and urgent care center, called “Total Care.” The 24-hour hybrid center — off Lewes Georgetown Highway — is designed to serve patients who may not know whether their condition requires emergency or urgent care.

Mr. Murphy gave the example of someone coming in with chest discomfort and fears they’re having a heart attack. “You should always go in to have that checked out,” he said. “Always.

“But, if it’s indigestion, you are going to walk out with not an emergency room bill. You’re going to walk out with an urgent care visit bill. Just having that in place reduces the total number of statewide emergency room visits.”

The facility also has labs and imaging services, and primary and specialty care physician offices.

• On the road — A new mobile health care unit was unveiled in July. It will be used to improve access to screenings, vaccinations and more for some communities.
• Command center — Bayhealth also outlined a new command center designed to improve patient placement — transitioning people to in-house care from the emergency department, surgical services and other areas. The group is located at the Blue Hen Corporate Center in Dover.

In August, Bayhealth reported that it cared for more than 101,000 patients in its emergency departments and over 17,000 inpatients in fiscal year 2022.

Mr. Murphy said the team’s “responsibility is to remove all the slowness of moving patients through the system.” Sometimes, it can simply be a matter of transportation, he said.

“We are very focused on moving patients appropriately and removing delays,” he said. “If it’s getting placed in a different hospital, like a behavioral health hospital, what are we doing? How do we stay on that?”

He added that the focus in this area has contributed to the reduction in average stays — from 5.8 to 4.8 days.

Recruitment, retention

Mr. Murphy said Bayhealth now employs about 4,200 people.

The newspaper’s archives indicate that about 1,200 individuals have been added to the payroll since 2016. There has been an ongoing demand for nurses, doctors and other health care professionals.

The state Department of Labor projected growth of nearly 15,000 health care-related jobs in its 2020-30 forecast.

To that end, Bayhealth has been aggressive in creating programs to recruit doctors and nurses. In 2019, it started a residency program.

“The main push was to make sure that we were doing everything we could to attract physicians into our Sussex communities,” said Mr. Murphy.

Bayhealth now offers residencies in family medicine, internal medicine, general surgery and emergency medicine. The hope is that the effort creates long-term connections to the area.

“They have clinical relationships that have been built,” said Mr. Murphy. “They’ve been living in the community for three years. They know our great nurses, they know our support teams, and they’re working in a clinical environment.

“Hopefully, some of them will stay in our community. And we believe it’s the best way to grow physicians in the community.”

Additionally, Bayhealth was approved for a hematology oncology fellowship — the first in Delaware.

“For cancer physicians, this fellowship will be for those that finish a residency, and they want to do additional training to become a cancer physician,” he said.

“As it relates to an aging population coming down the road 20 years from now, cancer care, having a pipeline of these types of physicians, is a very, very powerful thing that we have to invest in now.”

Mr. Murphy said Bayhealth has been working with Delaware Technical Community College throughout the state to expand nursing program slots. He noted that Bayhealth is five percentage points better than the national average in nursing turnover rates.

As another point of pride, he said the health system has earned the American Nurses Credentialing Center’s “Magnet” designation.

“What that specifically means is that we meet standards related to professional nursing and shared governance, the use of research and the delivery of nursing care,” said Mr. Murphy. “I believe that makes a big difference in attracting the best and brightest nurses to Bayhealth.”