USC's new student health center to be completed by December 2012

USC’s new Roger and Michele Dedeaux Engemann Student Health Center is expected to be completed by December 2012 and to be servicing students by spring 2013, according to the Executive Director of the University Park Health Center, Lawrence Nienstein.

The groundbreaking for USC’s new student health center will be held on Monday at 3:30 p.m., and Nienstein said construction will officially begin in June or July.

“We’ve totally finished phase one, which is actually the first design phase where you have all the rooms laid out,” Nienstein said. “They’re staring phase two now.”

According to Nienstein, phase two is deciding on details like where outlets will go and getting permits.

“They’ll be doing part of phase two and phase three at the same time, and like I said, probably breaking physical ground and putting up the outline of the building in June or July,” Nienstein said.

About 91,000 individual visits take place in the current health center, and Nienstein said the current building is undersized for the volume of patients that go through the building.

“Because of the lack of space, we have the lack of privacy to some degree. Some of the nurses’ stations are in the hallway,” Nienstein said.

Nienstein said most health facilities have offices for each clinician with two exam rooms in each office. The current USC health center only has one exam room per clinician, and the new building will allow for each clinician to have more than one exam room.

According to Nienstein the three top concerns that will be addressed with the new building are privacy, confidentiality and waiting time.

“Services won’t be on top of each other in the hallways, and then, with the increase in exam rooms, hopefully we’ll be able to get the wait time for things like urgent care where you don’t have appointments facilitated much faster,” Nienstein said.

The new health center will have about 15 new exam rooms in urgent care, which is a big jump from the 4 exam rooms in the current building.

The building will allow for more services to be offered to students and for all services to be located in the same building.

“We’ve had to spread resources around the campus. Physical therapy is across the street. The counseling center is by the bookstore, and our insurance office is down by Parking Structure D. So, we’ll all be coming together,” Nienstein said.

According to Nienstein, the new health center will be able to accommodate acupuncture and chiropractic services.

Nienstein said they will not be hiring new clinicians but there may be an increase in support staff.

The building of the new health center and its location off of Jefferson Boulevard next to Fluor Tower was announced Thursday, March 31 in a university-wide e-mail from President Nikias about a $15 million gift from Roger and Michele Dedeaux Engemann for the new student health center.