Hospital administrator Julia Hunter Jones has heard the new DeKalb Medical Center at Hillandale described as an anomaly among American health care facilities.

Few new state-of-the-art hospitals are built in predominantly African-American communities. Probably even fewer are built with 31.57 percent minority and local contractor involvement and at a cost of $650,000 a bed. According to a Georgia Tech health care facility survey, most new hospitals cost $1 million a bed.

"I say hats off to the DeKalb Medical Center leadership and this community who not only had the commitment to build a hospital here, but to make it so incredible," Jones said.

DeKalb Medical Center at Hillandale is Georgia's first master-planned, all-digital hospital, and with its earth-toned décor, plants, Internet-wired bistro and fireplaces, it has a welcoming atmosphere to enhance its healing mission.

"Our doctors love to boast, and I love to hear them. What the system and the community have done here is monumental and historical," Jones said.

Registered nurse Barbara Johnson, who studied nursing in the Philippines and previously worked in Newnan, wanted to be part of that history.

"I wanted to work in a city environment with cultural diversity and I wanted to grow as a nurse," she said. "The training was intense, and I'm still learning the technology, but the knowledge and warmth of my supervisor humbles me.

From left: Patient care technician Deniesheia Frazier, Dr. Michael Quinones, nurse Connie Hamilton, Julia Hunter Jones and Dr. Olunfunso Ojo at DeKalb Medical Center at Hillandale. "We felt it was important that our staff reflect the community, because that gives people a greater comfort level, but we didn't make diversity our first criteria for hiring. We looked for people who wanted to serve, who would do whatever was needed regardless of their job description," Jones said.

"You want leaders you can look up to because it makes you work harder. Julia Jones is an inspiration. When she talks to you, you know that she really sees you."

Jones began to envision a medical center where staff and patients would be proud to take ownership in 1990, when as a young management engineering assistant, she took on the construction challenge.

"The site was bare dirt and trees, but from the moment I accepted the job I began saying that DeKalb Medical is building a hospital here," she said. "It must have been convincing, because our South DeKalb advisory committee began saying it, too."

Realizing that a hospital was premature, planners took a non-traditional approach to build a medical campus first.

"In 1994, we built an outpatient diagnostic and treatment center to attract needed physicians to the area," Jones said. "We told the state that we couldn't attract doctors without support services and they bought that logic."

A second medical office building for specialists and a minor emergency center and outpatient surgery center followed. In 2001, DeKalb Medical Center applied to the state for a 100-bed hospital. The bid was quickly challenged by a competing hospital.

"For years, we had involved community leaders and citizens in the project and all those years of working collaboratively paid off," Jones said. South DeKalb residents wrote 5,000 letters to the state affirming that DeKalb Medical Center had the plan that was needed.

Residents believed that DeKalb Medical Center had already shown it had the experience and commitment to bring the best health care service to the community.

DeKalb Medical Center at Hillandale is a state-of-the-art facility that was built with significant minority involvement in the construction process.

"One way we've done that is to listen to our customers," Jones said. "We learned that they expected us to provide clinical expertise, but they wanted practitioners who would care about them, make eye contact, communicate and listen.

"We felt it was important that our staff reflect the community, because that gives people a greater comfort level, but we didn't make diversity our first criteria for hiring. We looked for people who wanted to serve, who would do whatever was needed regardless of their job description and be committed to this community."

She was pleased to discover many of those people close to home. Sierra Leone native Ayodele Max-Kanu, a registered nurse and med-surg coordinator, had been nursing in Atlanta for 10 years when the Hillandale facility opened five miles from her house.

"Having this hospital open in Lithonia is such a blessing," Max-Kanu said. "Our staff and patients come from all walks of life, and I believe you have to understand and meet people's cultural needs before you meet their medical needs."

She believes that her cultural knowledge is appreciated as much as her clinical skills. "Here, I not only found a job, but a family," she said.

Surprisingly, Jones, too, has found a home as administrator. "I never gave running the hospital a thought - my job was to build it - but when they asked me and I looked at my list of requirements for the job, I had them," she said.

Not only had she helped to shape the vision, but as a young African-American woman, mother and resident of south DeKalb, she also had a clear understanding of her patient base.

From research compiled for the certificate of need and designing the building, Jones knew there was a disparity in health care in the county. Residents of south DeKalb were 20 percent more likely to die prematurely from lack of prevention and intervention than their north DeKalb neighbors.

"We knew coming in that we would face the challenges of educating and treating for heart disease, cancer, stroke, sexually-transmitted diseases and AIDS," Jones said. "We committed to 'walk-the-talk' by making this a smoke-free environment, and making wellness education a high priority."

Even though Jones loves to eat hot dogs, she doesn't order them in the bistro. "I know that everything I do or don't do sends a message," she said. "As leaders of DeKalb Medical at Hillandale, we want to be role models for positive change."