Mount Carmel Dublin Hospital, Mount Carmel Health System’s newest hospital in central Ohio, was designed with the intention of making every encounter with a patient an encounter with Christ, the Divine Physician.
Mount Carmel, which began as Hawkes Hospital of Mount Carmel, was founded by the Congregation of the Sisters of the Holy Cross in 1886 and blossomed into a health system of 8,000+ employees serving more than 1.3 million patients each year. The health system is committed to serving in the spirit of the Gospel as a presence of compassionate and transformative healing. Its newest hospital, which opened April 22, is an extension of that mission.
Keeping Christ at the center of each patient-physician interaction translated to Mount Carmel Dublin Hospital’s architectural design. The hospital features a chapel in the center of the building.
“It sits between the medical office building and the hospital campus, designed very intentionally that way,” said William Hubbard, mission leader at Mount Carmel. “This is the heart of our campus, and so, it takes a very visible place no matter which door you’re walking into, and it’s accessible to everybody.”
The hospital campus, located in the City of Dublin on Emerald Parkway, off of Sawmill Road at the I-270 interchange, includes three entrance points. A medical office building is situated on the far left of the hospital’s main entrance. An emergency department (ED) is on the right side.
A large cross is featured on the building’s exterior. The cross reflects the hospital’s mission and is a nod to its founders.
“You see the campus, but it’s the cross that stands out,” Hubbard noted of the view of the hospital from the main road. “That’s a very intentional landmark that we’re using as a kind of ‘way-finding’ device … that the cross helps us find our way, and also, that every time you see a cross, we’re thinking Sisters of the Holy Cross as well – that legacy piece.”
Bishop Earl Fernandes offered a benediction, or blessing, of the hospital on April 21, Easter Monday. The bishop’s blessing was held before Mount Carmel Dublin’s opening to the public.
Inside the hospital, the chapel, named Christ Our Hope Chapel, includes a crucifix, Stations of the Cross along the right-side wall leading to an altar and a tabernacle in the front center housing the Eucharistic Lord. Clergy will celebrate Mass in the chapel, and consecrated hosts can be distributed to patients.
“Hospital chapels are places where you want people to feel compassion, welcome, consolation, mercy, hope,” Hubbard said. “You’re coming, mainly, here because you have a loved one here, because you are injured or sick and have to put yourself before the Lord in that moment … for strength, consolation.
“Sometimes even our colleagues and caregivers just need to get away, just need some silence. The chapel, I think, is the inspirational place that we want them to be.”
Mount Carmel Dublin can broadcast services from the chapel to patient rooms on channel 95.1.
The hospital offers a separate prayer and meditation room next to the chapel. The space can be used by individuals of non-Christian faiths, Hubbard noted, such as its Muslim colleagues or physicians.
Msgr. Joseph Hendricks blesses the New Mount Carmel Dublin Hospital that opened April 22. Photo courtesy William Keimig
Beyond the chapel, the 35-acre campus offers an array of cardiology, neurology, orthopedics, primary care and surgical services.
“This is where Jesus, as Divine Physician, is inspiration for everybody who works here – and really, just that sense of healing beyond the bodily injury,” Hubbard explained. “We’re always looking at body, mind and spirit together. That’s this space.”
The hospital’s first-floor emergency department offers 14 beds with an ability to overflow into an additional 10 beds.
“This area has a very robust emergency medical services business – our 9-1-1 providers – and so we anticipate the ED is going to be pretty busy,” said Monica Treinish, Mount Carmel’s vice president of operations and chief nursing officer.
Procedures will take place on the second floor of the hospital, which contains operating rooms and neurology and cardiology services. Services include nuclear medicine stress testing and neurodiagnostics, such as electroencephalogram tests, that detect abnormalities in brain waves, Treinish explained.
Primary care is also stationed on the second floor of the building. Central Ohio Urology Group and Central Ohio Primary Care will have office space in the hospital’s medical office building as well.
Rooms for patients admitted to the hospital are located on the third floor. The floor contains 30 beds, four of which make up the intensive care unit (ICU).
An additional 30 beds will be offered on the fourth floor of the hospital, set to open later this summer. The ICU will then expand to seven rooms.
The campus also features technology in patient rooms for a virtual nurse, who can partner with nurses on the floor, part of the hospital’s “together team model,” Treinish explained. The virtual nurse can offer education, ask medical history questions or answer patient questions, and provide discharge instructions.
The back end of the hospital includes an administrative conference room, which can hold more than 60 people and be split into two rooms. A smaller conference area is also included in the area.
Hubbard said the hospital could offer community-facing education, such as seminars, in the space. He explained that a goal of Mount Carmel Dublin is being a health campus.
A schedule for Masses offered in Christ Our Hope Chapel has not yet been released. A schedule will be added as the hospital begins seeing patients.