Bon Secours opens Harbour View hospital in Suffolk

Bon Secours on Tuesday will officially open its new $80 million, 100,000 square-foot Harbour View Medical Center in Suffolk.

The three-story addition adjoins the existing Bon Secours Health Center at Harbour View campus. Bon Secours broke ground on the hospital in October 2022, and construction wrapped up on March 31. On Monday, hospital leaders and Suffolk officials gathered for a ribbon-cutting ceremony to celebrate the center’s opening.

“It was 10 years ago that I was able to participate in some of the very early strategy planning sessions that imagined a hospital here at Harbor View,” the hospital’s inaugural president, Andy Spicknall, said during the ceremony. “The vision for this facility was championed by many of the people that are standing here in this lobby who saw the need for expanded access to health care within this community. So to stand here now celebrating the realization of that vision with all of you is incredibly rewarding.”

The new medical center includes 18 private inpatient rooms and four new operating rooms, a freestanding emergency department and on-site laboratory and imaging services including CT, MRI and X-ray capabilities. Spicknall noted that area patients would no longer have to travel long distances or travel to another city to receive care.

The center also features Bon Secours’ first “smart” hospital rooms, which utilize AI-powered technology that integrates with patients’ electronic medical records, so the records stay up to date. Each of the hospital’s inpatient rooms has an electronic whiteboard that displays information including the patient’s care plan, medications and tests that their physicians have ordered, as well as when results are available.

“Beyond the whiteboard, we’ve implemented sensors within our patient rooms that are all designed around improving patient safety,” Spicknall said. “These sensors will alert our nurses in real time to potential safety risks. So, for example, if a patient who is a high fall risk is attempting to get out of bed without assistance, our nurses will be notified in real time and will be able to respond to the needs of the patients and help keep them from falling.”

Spicknall said the hospital also implemented new communications technology that will connect patients directly with their nursing team, regardless of where their team is located on the unit.

“And we are building towards a future where this technology will aid our nurses and physicians and documentation to reduce the amount of time that they spend in front of a computer, allowing them to spend more time with their patients,” he said.

Bon Secours brought on board about 100 staff members to serve the new hospital, Spicknall said.

Charlie Fairchild, vice chair of Bon Secours’ Hampton Roads Board of Directors, praised Bon Secours staff, saying the advanced technology the center uses would be “nothing without compassionate caregivers using it.”

“It’s not just about smarter rooms,” Fairchild said. “It’s about stronger relationships. It’s about creating an environment where people feel seen, heard and valued from the moment they walk through our doors, whether it’s a woman seeking breast cancer screening, an older adult undergoing joint replacement or anyone needing emergency services.”

Bon Secours operates four hospitals and medical centers and one outpatient facility in Hampton Roads, and the Bon Secours Richmond Health System offers a network of seven acute hospitals, primary and specialty care practices, ambulatory care sites and continuing care facilities across a 24-locality region.