Cape Fear Valley Health welcomed media to the top of their campus on Monday, Oct. 28 to get a first look at their new expanded facility and finished helipads. 

The helipads, one of which can accommodate a Black Hawk helicopter, were built in the Netherlands by Bayards Helidecks, and officially went into service earlier this month, replacing the use of the helipad currently located on the hospital’s front lawn.

The new helipads are set to streamline the hospital experience for flown in patients. Located on the roof of the Valley Pavillion, this new location allows patients to be taken by elevator directly into the hospital's Emergency Department, Heart and Vascular Center, ICU or Operating Room. 

“Quicker access to the cath [Catheterization] lab, quicker access to the ICU, you're possibly cutting down as much as 10 minutes versus landing down there. If we land down there, we have to go through the front doors, and there's elevators and mazes to get to all the different units,” shared Brian McCoy FP-C, a member of the LifeLINK Air Med team. “So fortunately for us, it's going to give us access with these elevators going directly to those units and straight down.” 

“Aviation wise, it’s a much easier landing,” shared LifeLINK Pilot Jim Habermehl. “The path down there, you’ve got poles, wires, and everything you have to avoid coming in. And once you get below the roof of the hospital the wind starts swirling. On a day like today, it's not too bad, but on a hot, windy day, it can really mess with the aircraft, and what this allows us to do is come in [with] no obstacles, and it's a much safer landing.” 

The helipads are the tip of the renovation iceberg for the Cape Fear Valley Health Main Campus located on Owen Drive in Fayetteville, NC. 

Started in September of 2022, the expansion has added two floors for patient care, bringing the Valley Pavilion up to eight floors, including a mechanical space between floors. This adds 100,000 square feet to the hospital, bringing its total square footage to over 1.7 million square feet.

With outer structural expansions now complete, the highest point of the building is now 161 feet, 3 inches tall, which makes it the tallest building in Fayetteville. When the internal portion of the expansion is complete, it will add 92 beds to the hospital – 44 Adult Intensive Care Unit (ICU) beds and 48 Adult Step Down unit beds – bringing Cape Fear Valley Medical Center’s capacity to 762 licensed beds, including 85 Adult ICU beds and 106 Adult Step Down beds. Step down beds are for intermediate care, when a patient needs more than observation but does not need ICU-level of care.

“It really goes with the transformation of this from a small community hospital to a tertiary care academic facility. When that helipad was built originally, it was built to take patients away from here,” shared Vice President of Operations and Development Brian Pearce. “Now we're bringing in a lot of patients. Last year, we brought in over 7,500 patients from other small hospitals. Now, they never have to leave a clinical area when they bring them in. Or, when we take one out, they never have to go out into a public area.” 

According to leadership with Cape Fear Valley Health, pilots and air crews will continue to get familiar with the new helipads this week and the inside renovations are expected to be completed in December of 2024.