With all of the improvements, additions and renovations that have been done to Crenshaw Community Hospital over the last three years, Acting Administrator Brad Eisemann said that over 99 percent of them were now complete.

“We’ve had approximately $7 million dollars in improvements to the hospital,” Eisemann told the Luverne Rotary Club Monday at its regular meeting. “All of the hospital on the inside has been touched with these improvements in one way or another.”

CCH boasts a new ER in the back, plus a new kitchen and lobby. The labor and delivery rooms were redone, including renovations inside all of the patients’ rooms.

However, the physical improvements are not the only ones seen at CCH. Eisemann explained how the hospital has new state-of-the-art equipment in several of its departments.

But what many residents may not know about are the new services that are now offered at the hospital. Eisemann said that an orthopedic surgeon comes from Montgomery to see patients on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and a plastic surgeon comes each Wednesday to CCH.

“We are also talking with another orthopedic surgeon, and we’re in the process of interviewing a general surgeon as well.”

“Our goal is to keep our residents in town,” he explained. “We want to be able to provide services that will keep people from having to drive to Montgomery or Troy or Dothan. Now, will we be able to do everything? No, we don’t have ICU services and there are no Critical Care services.”

Eisemann said that CCH has had 1,281 hospital admissions this year alone, in addition to 4,300 ER visits, and 7,000 outpatient visits so far.

“At a big hospital, you would work in just one segment, but in a smaller, rural hospital like ours, our staff members have to be able to do anything and everything,” he said.

One of the new programs that the hospital is very excited about is the rural doctors’ training program. CCH is working in conjunction with LBWCC, Troy University and A.T. Still University in Arizona to train medical students. Eisemann said the students are also doing clinical rotations at the hospital.

“We are really working hard to get our young people and our college students to come see what rural medicine is all about,” he said.

Eisemann, who is from Prattville, will be the acting administrator for the next several months, while InMed, Inc., the group that owns the hospital, will begin seeking candidates for a permanent administrator early in 2009.

CCH will host an Open House later this month.