Rutledge Tower Grand Opening Events

Rutledge Tower Open House for MUSC employees

From 1 to 5 p.m. on Friday, July 24, MUSC faculty, staff and students are invited to preview Rutledge Tower. Take a self-guided tour of the first and second floors and enjoy refreshments.

MUSC Rutledge Tower Open House

From 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturday, July 25, join Rutledge Tower physicians and staff members for tours of the building and health-related activities for all ages. All 10 of the tower’s floors will be open to the public.

There will be blood pressure and hearing screenings, and blood glucose and pulmonary function tests. WCSC-TV Channel 5 will distribute breast self-exam packets. Free parking will be available in the Rutledge Tower parking garage at the corner of Rutledge Avenue and Calhoun Street and in B-Lot and G-Lot.

The Milk Mustache Mobile will also make a stop in Charleston as part of the 100-city Better Bones Tour to encourage people to drink more milk for calcium and better bone health. A bone density scanner, operated by trained technicians will be available. Then try your luck in a contest to appear in a “People” magazine Milk Mustache advertisement. Children can bring their teddy bears to the Teddy Bear Clinic. While their bear gets patched up, they can learn what it’s like to visit the doctor, get their height and weight checked, and receive Project Kid Care identification badges from Sunny 96.9 FM. For more information, call 792-1414.

Taking health care to new heights

The building on the corner of Ashley Avenue and Calhoun Street as it appeared from 1926 to 1963.

Buildings on this site at the corner of Calhoun Street and Ashley Avenue have housed health care services for the Lowcountry community since the 1800s when the Sisters of Charity of Our Lady of Mercy opened the St. Francis Infirmary. Through the years, the structures have changed, just as the practice of health care.

The oldest building still in use today was constructed in 1926. The first six floors of the tower were built in 1975; the top six were added in 1980. The opening of MUSC Rutledge Tower begins a new life for the historic building and a new era of providing state-of-the-art health care services for the people of Charleston.

The buildings that make up Rutledge Tower have 310,000 square feet of space, or about the same amount of space as 200 average homes. And a fully equipped Rutledge Tower is approximately equal in weight to the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Enterprise.

We expect to have about 265,000 patient visits to Rutledge Tower each year. And more than 6,000 surgeries will be performed yearly in Rutledge Tower's seven operating room suites. The thousands of people who’ll use the tower every day will enjoy spacious surroundings, sparkling decor, and on many floors, sweeping views of Charleston.

Deputy administrator is guest speaker for grand opening*

Michael M. Hash, Deputy Administrator, Health Care Financing Administration

Michael M. Hash joined the Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA) as deputy administrator on April 30.

From 1995 until joining HCFA, Hash was a principal with Health Policy Alternatives, Inc. (HPA), a Washington-based consulting firm that specializes in health care financing and related policy areas.

Hash served from 1990 to 1994 as Senior Staff Associate at the Subcommittee on Health and the Environment of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. In this capacity, he worked on Medicare, health care reform, health care quality assurance, health care workforce issues, organ transplants, clinical laboratories, and health services research.

From 1980 to 1990, Hash was with HPA, where he provided policy analysis and strategic advice on health care financing and organization for a wide array of HPA clients, including providers, practitioners, payers and patients.

From 1973 to 1980, Hash was employed by the American Hospital Association, with progressive responsibilities that lead to his position as deputy director of the Washington Office, and responsibility for management of the association’s government relations program.

Hash is a graduate of Washington and Lee University with a major in political science. He continued his postgraduate studies in political science at Vanderbilt University.

He has been a visiting professor in the Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health and in the Georgetown University School of Nursing. He has held board positions at Providence Hospital in Washington and the District of Columbia Hospital Association.

*Grand Opening Ceremony is invitation only.

Rutledge Tower Pharmacy Services

An actual photo of your medication appears on the computer screen.

With the push of a button, the new dispensing technology housed in Rutledge Tower’s pharmacy can count out hundreds of pills in a matter of seconds—a task that can take several minutes by hand.

Here’s how it works: Each day hundreds of prescriptions will be filled by pharmacists in Rutledge Tower. When you drop off your prescription, its image is scanned into the pharmacy computer system so it can be easily retrieved if questions arise. Then, a prescription label prints out at one of two identical filling stations. At each station, the 200 most commonly prescribed drugs are stored in separate containers. The push of a button triggers the dispenser to count out the correct number of pills, capsules or tablets and send them down a chute into a waiting bottle. Then the prescription goes into a filling station slot. If you're having multiple prescriptions filled, a small light beside the slot stays red until your entire order is complete.

Counted tablets are dispensed into a prescription bottle.

Checks for safety: Each drug is identified by its own individual bar code, printed on the prescription label. Before you receive your prescription, that bar code is scanned, and a color image of the pill, tablet or capsule that should be in your bottle appears. The pharmacist matches that image with the actual prescription to ensure you’re getting the medicine you need.

Radiology

With the Picture Archival Communications System, or PACS for short, X-ray films are a thing of the past. Instead of making X-rays on film, digital plates are exposed and scanned by a laser. Then the digital images are entered into an electronic archive system and stored on disks that take just a fraction of the space films used to occupy. Miles of fiber optic cables were installed in Rutledge Tower’s walls so these images can be retrieved at viewing stations in every clinic. The advantages for both patient and clinician are enormous—no lost films, no developing time, and delivery with the push of a button. When a clinician accesses a patient’s most recent image, PACS also retrieves those from previous visits for immediate comparison. Images also can be viewed in several locations at once, allowing clinic staff members to discuss cases with specialists in different offices.

Here’s a brief look at what it took to complete the conversion:

A brick mason shapes bricks for the north entrance patient drop-off area.

Hours Dedicated to Building Design: 2,000

Man Hours Worked During Construction: more than 750,000

Peak Daily Manpower: 450

Square Feet of Carpet: 16,468

Total Cost of Renovation: $36.7 million