Norton West Louisville Hospital is on schedule to open at the end of this year.

It'll be the first hospital in the west end of Louisville and 150 years.

Our Kelsie Starks sat down with Carranza Townsend, the newly named chief administrative officer of the new hospital, to talk about what it will offer.

And it was a commitment to the community.

You went to the community first and asked then what do you want to see in this hospital?

What were some of the things that you heard from that that are now being implemented in The Real Project?

Yeah.

So we we broke ground last summer, but the project really started two years before that.

And so to your point, that research is what really matters.

And I don't mean just the data.

Data is important.

Norton is a data backed organization.

So we're really we're really about looking at what makes it different and what makes a difference and what moves the needle.

But most importantly, what do what does the community want?

What do our people want to see?

What do they want to experience?

What services do they need in the hospital?

And those are the questions that we ask.

So it's, you know, local art.

They want a green space.

They wanted somewhere to to gather.

So a community room.

We know that West Louisville's a food desert.

We wanted to address that in the best way that we could.

Those are all the things that we heard back.

The different services there, 68,000 plus people in West Louisville, most of them are women of childbearing age.

Women's services is going to be key.

You know, things like that.

So things that we know make sense.

And then listening to the voice of the community, put those together.

And that's how we came up with what we're going to do at West Louisville.

How is this hospital going to be different from other Norton facilities?

What are the goals here?

I like to call it a hospital with no walls.

We will have walls.

We have a building.

We do have a spigot.

Yes, figuratively speaking, a hospital with no walls.

But what that means is holistic medicine, not in the way of its people all the time and not in the way of we're going to be, you know, sitting in a circle and singing Kumbaya and meditating all day.

When I say holistic medicine, I mean taking care of the whole patient.

So other resources that they need.

We know that health care is important, but if you can't take care of your family and take care of yourself, health care falls by the wayside.

And that's what we've seen here.

So making sure that we're educating patients, making sure that we have wraparound services, whether it be connecting people with food resources.

So, for example, we have a partnership with Deere to care where we're going to have an actual pantry inside the hospital.

We know that that is a need, right?

We have that community room so you can teach other educational things, have other resources that we bring in.

And then, of course, it is the Norton Health Care and Opportunity Campus.

And so we've got a whole slew of resources right next door that will collaborate with them as well.

The idea for the new hospital was pitched to the CEO by Townsend, who started her career at Norton Health Care as a nurse.

And you can see and hear the full story of how the hospital came to be and how more development is happening in Louisville's West End.

On this coming Sunday's edition of Inside Louisville with Kelsey Starks Sunday at 12 noon Eastern, 11 a.m. Central right here OD Katie.