Seven decades of activity: constant growth and improvement
From one hundred hospital beds to health institution of the republican level
Modernly equipped Klaipeda Red Cross hospital was opened on 20th June, 1933 on initiative of the doctor and chairman of Lithuanian Red Cross Society Rokas Sliupas. Back then, this institution which had 100 beds had three active departments: Internal Illnesses, Gynaecology and Surgery. In 1936 Department of Otorhinolaryngology and a dispensary were established. 12 staff physicians and 20 nurses and midwives worked in the hospital. The hospital used to be overflowing because it steadily hospitalised 140-160 patients. Since the end of 1945 when the hospital, the ancestress of all Klaipeda health institutions, restored its activity it has grown steadily. During 1987-2000 it survived critical period and difficult years of challenges and gradually revived and expanded: Skuodas Hospital was attached to it in 2004, Klaipeda Psychiatric Hospital became its affiliate in the end of 2008, and Klaipeda Tuberculosis Hospital became its affiliate in 2010. In 2010 hospital acquired status of the republican level and changed its name – it became Klaipeda Republican Hospital. Today the hospital is an important and significant medicine centre in north-western area of Lithuania, popular and well-regarded by patients.
Today Klaipeda Republican Hospital is a spacious, modern, multiprofile health institution continually and dynamically developing its scope of activity and the range of its services, having affiliates and subdivisions around the city of Klaipeda and another affiliate in Skuodas, too. Hospital has 24 clinical units and 925 beds, 1250 employees, 210 of them are physicians and 504 nurses.
22 800 hospital patients were treated, 8484 surgeries were performed, 3110 days of surgery services were provided, 212 737 ambulatory consultations, 6681 haemodialysis procedures were performed in 2012 in the hospital and its all subdivisions and affiliates.
Modern, reputable and well-regarded hospital provides high level surgical and therapeutic profile services. High qualification specialists, wide range of services, consideration and carefulness for the patient, modern medical equipment, new-look and renovated hospital premises – this complex of positive features encourage choosing Klaipeda Republican Hospital patients not only from Klaipeda region but from the whole country, too. It is one of the indicators of honest and well-performed work by the medics of the hospital.
Since 2007, Klaipeda Republican Hospital has been an accredited base of students’ clinical medicine practice (internship) and doctors’ residency of Lithuanian University of Health Sciences Medical Academy and Vilnius University Faculty of Medicine.
Centralised sterilisation
The development of the hospital, wide range of health services and high quality are inseparable from the development and improvement of the infrastructure of the institution, acquisition of modern medical equipment, employment of new qualified specialists and creation of convenient working environment for constant improvement. A lot of financial, organisational and intellectual resources were devoted for this purpose during the last decade. Infrastructure development and investment projects financed by the EU structural support and state investment program funds were actively planned and prepared. 9 projects financed by EU support funds for health care infrastructure and improvement of quality and accessibility of health services were implemented during 2008-2012 alone. Total value of the projects – over 31 M Litas. During this period new block of the basic hospital was built which has a modern block of operating-rooms, reanimation and intensive care and other therapeutic units, and the most modern centralised sterilisation room. There is a pathology service established in another new block which changed fundamentally: new spacious premises, modern diagnostic equipment, new qualified specialists helped it become one of the strongest and most qualified pathology services in the country. Emergency unit was renewed, expanded and provided with new medical equipment: more rooms for patient examination, the small operating-room, patients’ observation ward. It has to be noted that the hospital acquired a lot of modern medical equipment: two computed tomography devices, a digital mammography device with stereotaxic biopsy table, digital x-ray systems, an ultrasonic lithotripter, ultrasound devices of various configurations, a teleendoscopic diagnosis system, modern equipment for clinical and microbiological laboratory and a lot of other kind of technologies that are crucial for everyday activity, qualitative diagnosis and treatment services. Operating-rooms have been provided with all necessary medical equipment which meets the contemporary requirements. Examinations with the first and so far the only one in Lithuania magnetic resonance equipment of 3 Tesla power were started in the hospital. Information technologies have been being rapidly implanted in the institution: hospital information system and medical images saving, archiving and transmission system have been operating successfully, and equipment for television broadcasting from the operating rooms was installed.
3T magnetic resonance equipment
One goal of the large complex – healthy person
Skuodas affiliate of the hospital has sustained restructurisation of activity and services, investment projects of 6 M Litas worth were implemented during eight years. Very important new profile medical services were started being provided for the patients: haemodialysis, supportive treatment and nursing and day surgery. With the help of specialists from the basic hospital affiliate guarantee day and night services of emergency therapeutic and surgical help, reanimation and intensive care therapy. Various profile doctors-specialists who come to provide consultations from Klaipeda under fixed time schedule make certain the development of the range of ambulatory services and constant growth dynamics of their amount.
Traumatology department
Klaipeda Republican Hospital is the most relevant provider of psychiatric help service and the only one of tuberculosis treatment service in the region. Having successfully implemented five investment projects financed by EU funds the total value of which was 9 M Litas, Psychiatry affiliate of Klaipeda Republican Hospital became a modern therapeutic base providing a wide range of psychiatric and psychotherapeutic help for adults, children, teenagers and elderly patients from Klaipeda city, region and entire Lithuania, having 6 in-patient departments and 235 hospital beds.
After the renovation of the buildings of the branch, specially designed premises for the psychiatric department, which adhere to all current standards for hygiene and safety, have been set up, modern medical monitoring equipment was purchased, and the conditions for patient treatment, personnel work, and the quality of psychiatric services have all become better.
The Daytime Patient Department, the Production-Rehabilitation Department, and the Centre for Acute Mental Crises, which is established to treat people with mental disabilities and to help them to re-adapt socially, are also presently open for operation. A wide array of treatments is applied here: from medication, psychological consultancy and diagnosis, psychotherapy in groups or individually, poetry, arts, or music therapy, ergotherapy, to consultations with social workers, and the resolution of social problems. These help the patients to successfully overcome their crises, to gain a sense of personal wholesomeness and to help integrate oneself into a healthy society, to decrease the level of damage and disability, to enhance the functionality and adaptability of personality to society.
When the Klaipėda Tuberculosis Hospital became a branch of the Klaipėda Republican Hospital, work organization and administration were optimized and modern medical equipment was installed. Differential diagnostics procedures have become easier with the increase in quality, accuracy and speed of laboratory diagnostics: the branch has been provided with accessibility to the entire range of testing and research, and with easier accessibility to consultations with specialists of other fields. Presently, the branch, which provides modern tuberculosis diagnostics, nursing and treatment services, using advanced scientific technologies and equipment, maintains a patient department containing 205 beds, and treats 700 to 800 patients every year. There are currently 118 specialists, 12 of which are physicians and 37 of which are workers of the nursing staff, in the Outpatient Consultancy Department, which receives more than 15,000 patient visits per year.
The branch has departments for the treatment of children, for newly discovered forms of Tuberculosis, differential diagnostics, Tuberculosis relapses, and Host Immune Response in Tuberculoses. The branch provides tuberculosis diagnostics, nursing and treatment services, which are proven by and based on science and advanced diagnostics technologies and modern treatments.
The hospital is putting in relentless efforts into broadening the array of provided outpatient services, their quality and accessibility because the hospital is carrying out tasks established in the national health strategy. Outpatient consultancy in multiple medical fields of expertise is provided in four separate subdivisions in Klaipėda: in two consultancy clinics, in the Outpatient Consultancy Subdivision of the Hospital, and in the Clinic for Skin and Venereal Diseases. It is noteworthy to mention that this institution is the only one in the Klaipėda region that provides outpatient phototherapy treatment, which is used to treat skin diseases. Another Outpatient Consultancy Clinic is in the Skuodas Branch.
Accomplished tasks bring positivity to patients and staff alike
Projects that have been successfully concluded, good performance results, and favourable comments from patients both obligate and encourage the fulfillment of new plans and objectives. It is pleasing to say that the first daytime surgery center, separate from the patient department, in Lithuania is presently being set-up and is nearing completion. The center will allow the flow of patients to become separate and more organized, will enhance work organization and administration, will ensure higher levels of safety during surgeries and interventions, less post-operational complications and will decrease the risk of infections, will provide more comfort and safety to patients, compromising the routine lives of patients less, and diminishing the waiting cue for certain medical services. A new hospital building is also under construction, which will extend the hospital complex of buildings by 5,500 m². This area will be dedicated to the patient departments, the clinical biology laboratory, post-operational intensive care unit, and emergency aid unit. Therefore, conditions for patient treatment will be enhanced: spacious single or two bed wards, which adhere to health standards, will be set up. The wards will have separate sanitary quarters, an alarm system, and will be provided with additional comfort establishment services (television and wireless internet). Staff working conditions will also be enhanced. With the introduction of additional premises, the possibility to provide more outpatient consultancy services and the decreased waiting times will become a reality.
Furthermore, a safe and convenient ramp leading to the admissions-emergency aid unit and lift are planned for construction, along with an enclosed parking lot for ambulances, which should ensure patient protection from negative weather conditions and atmospheric factors.
The hospital will continue to install and incorporate information technologies. The hospital and its partners are currently working on the creation of the e-health services project, the purpose of which is to establish the possibility for citizens and patients to acquire their medical histories, as well as test and other diagnosis results, and, for the health institutions and medical specialists, to establish the possibility to communicate among themselves and to safely exchange information through the electronic system, which would ensure timely high quality health care services.
Romaldas Sakalauskas, a Chief Physician, holding the position for 13 years, and who has been working at the hospital since 1984, states: “The objective that we have to tackle is to continuously establish new and effective medical technologies, to send our staff into training courses which would increase their qualifications, and to improve the conditions for patient treatment. This would allow the optimization of the quality of and accessibility to health care services, the adherence to the standards of the EU health system, the Ministry of Health of the Republic of Lithuania, and of the Hospital, the possibility for the patients to choose the best services, and the establishment of justice in health care relationships. We seek to provide the highest quality medical care to everyone who turns to the hospital for treatment.”
