Daily Times-Call | Longs Peak Hospital celebrates helicopter landing pad, expanded facilities
Tuesday morning, UCHealth Longs Peak Hospital in Longmont hosted the first official helicopter landing on the facility’s new rooftop helipad. A small crowd of staff, board members and construction partners gathered to watch the UCHealth LifeLine medical helicopter settle on the roof of the west side of the hospital campus. The helipad is one of several portions of the hospital that were recently completed during the hospital’s ongoing expansion project. The expansion adds 89,000 square feet to the hospital campus. Tuesday was also the official opening of two new operating rooms, three new labor and delivery rooms, and nine new pre-surgery and post-surgery care bays. The original helicopter landing area — in use since the hospital opened in 2017 — is on the hospital’s northeast side. Previously, patients flown to the hospital were loaded into an ambulance, driven to the other side of the building, unloaded from the vehicle and carried into the emergency department. With the new rooftop helipad, however, patients only need to be given a quick elevator ride down to the emergency room. “With that landing, I became a little emotional about what this means for our community,” hospital President Ryan Rohman told the crowd Tuesday.