DATE: Monday, September 1, 1997             TAG: 9709010112

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B2   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: Staff writers Matt Dolan and Rebecca Myers Cutchins

        contributed to this report.
                                            LENGTH:   81 lines

HAMPTON ROADS

CHESAPEAKE

Hospital to renovate

old critical care unit

for overflow patients

Chesapeake General Hospital, which opened a new $3 million state-of-the-art critical care unit in April, will spend $1.1 million to renovate its old unit.

The new 14-bed unit will be used as a combination of critical care overflow beds and progressive care beds for patients who have moved out of critical care. Hospital president Donald S. Buckley said the hospital sometimes receives complaints from patients entering the older six-bed ward without the privacy and other specialized accommodations they receive in the new fourth-floor unit.

``During the past fiscal year, we have experienced an occupancy rate of 86 percent in the progressive care unit (a step down from intensive care), indicating we do need more beds,'' Buckley told authority members last week. Improvements should include updated gas connectors to make patients' care compatible with the new critical care unit and other equipment changes.

Renovations should be finished by July 1998, Buckley said.

VIRGINIA BEACH

Music, fun continues at

Beach with fall convention

The American Music Festival ends today, but the music and the fun begins again this week when the Mid-Altantic Shrine brings 19,000 visitors from Virginia to Connecticut to the Oceanfront Wednesday through Sunday for an early fall convention.

A variety of Shrine bands will play for the public at the 24th Street Park from 1:30 to 5 p.m. Friday, and clowns will perform at the 17th Street Park from 3 to 5 p.m.

A convention highlight will be a four-hour parade Saturday morning at 9:30 with drum and bugle corps, motorized units of clown vehicles and motorcycles, horses and bagpipers. Marchers will make their way north from 17th Street, along Atlantic Avenue, and past the reviewing stand at 30th Street to 31st Street.

The convention is exptected to add $10 million in revenue for the city and at least $186,000 in taxes, according to an official estimate. It is set to return here in 1998 and 1999. Plans for the year 2000 will be decided this week.

PORTSMOUTH

Public invited to program

aimed at helping children

Agencies, businesses and individuals are invited to attend a breakfast meeting from 8:30 to 10:30 a.m. Thursday in the conference room at Portsmouth General Hospital to establish a Portsmouth Healthy Families Program.

The program is a multi-agency effort designed to ensure that every child is born healthy and enters school ready to learn. The program is based on a national model that began in Hawaii in the late 1980s.

This national initiative provides comprehensive services for families in order to prevent child abuse and neglect. Community agencies are asked to collaborate on the project so that services are not duplicated.

The Portsmouth Interagency Network has offered its full support of this initiative, implemented by the Healthy Families Coalition of South Hampton Roads.

For more information, call Nancy Pavona at 622-7017, Ext. 136.

COMING UP

TUESDAY

Chesapeake - The Great Bridge Community Center at 212 Holt Drive will be closed Tuesday, through Sept. 6 while workers paint the building and refinish the gymnasium floor. All programs and classes will be canceled while the work is in progress.

Norfolk - ``Welfare Reform - A Reality'' will be the topic of the Neighborhood Network's next public forum from 7 to 9 p.m. in New Hope Christian Community Center, 3241 Brest Ave. The forum aims to generate ideas on how communities can help meet some of the needs created by welfare reform, such as jobs, job training, child care, mentoring and transportation. For more information, call 857-1794.

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