Inpatient Projects:Cincy hospital plans $265M project

ORTHO FACILITY WILL BE CENTERPIECE OF PROJECT BY THE CHRIST HOSPITAL

By John Mugford

The Christ Hospital in Cincinnati plans to begin construction this coming summer on a $265 million expansion and improvement at its main campus in the historic district of Mt. Auburn, just north of downtown.

According to hospital officials as well as architects with the firm of Chicago-based Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP (SOM), the centerpiece of the expansion would be a 332,000 square foot facility dedicated solely to orthopedic and spine care.

Included in the orthopedic facility would be 60 private inpatient rooms; 10 operating rooms (ORs), as well as two shelled ORs for future growth; physical and occupational therapy services; imaging services, pain management; physician offices and administrative offices; and underground parking for about 150 vehicles.

The 332,000 square foot facility would be located just south of and connected to the main hospital; it would have a separate entrance for patients and visitors.

An opening for the expansion is tentatively scheduled for summer 2015.

The overall expansion project also includes the construction of an eight-level, 900-space visitor parking garage slated for completion in late 2013 and the relocation and construction of a materials management building. The first floor of the future parking structure, according to hospital officials, could also be used for retail or community use.

The Christ Hospital would be the only local hospital, and one of just a few in the country, with a facility that has a sole focus on orthopedic and spine services and research. The facility would include the Fragility Fracture and Osteoporosis Management Center, the first of its kind in the region, according to officials.

“This unique specialty facility will enhance patients’ healing experience and create ease of access so that patients may move seamlessly through the continuum of care,” said Susan Croushore, president and CEO of The Christ Hospital, in a statement.

“It will be efficiently organized and designed with patient and family-centered care in mind.”

Ms. Croushore added that the new facility would be connected to all of the existing buildings on the campus for “patient and visitor convenience.”

In addition to the SOM architectural firm, the project team includes Cincinnati-based Messer Construction Co. and its Health Care Division as the construction manager.

D.C.’s Sibley set to start $200M phase of plan

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Construction cranes continue to dot the campus at Sibley Memorial Hospital in Washington, with the largest, most expensive and last of three major construction phases scheduled to begin in the fall of this year.

The final phase would entail the construction of a new $200 million, 268-bed patient tower and new ED capable of handling 50,000 annual visits.

Also as part of the project, existing space in the main 50-year-old hospital structure would be retrofitted, creating a hospital with 328 private beds. That project has a scheduled completion of 2015.

The inpatient portion of the project is needed, according to Sibley officials, to meet the demand of patients who want private rooms with more space for family visitors, to im­­prove infection control and patient safety, to respond to aging pa­tients’ needs and, as noted, to replace the hospital’s 50-year-old patient care infrastructure.

So far, one phase of the project has been completed. In January, work concluded on the $55 million first phase, which entails a new 140,000 square foot med­­ical office building (MOB) and a 750-car parking garage.

The MOB includes 65,000 square feet of physician offices, a surgery center and an imaging center.

The MOB site features a 50,000-gallon pond with two waterfalls and a gazebo. A retail portion of the facility includes a pharmacy, bank, lab, med/spa, women’s health center, an OB-related gift shop and a café.

The second phase is currently under construction: a $29.1 million radiation oncology cancer center with a total of about 33,000 square feet of space.

That project, which will have four therapy treatment vaults and facilities for therapy planning and simulation, is slated for completion this coming summer.

“This represents a new beginning,” said Jerry Price, Sibley’s senior VP for real estate and development.

“The future’s bright at Sibley and we’re looking forward to serving the community with these new facilities.”

The hospital recently became part of Baltimore-based Johns Hopkins Medicine.

The architect on the first two phases has been Gaithersburg, Md.-based Wilmot/Sanz, which continues to work with the hospital on the overall master plan.

Falls Church, Va.-based HITT Contracting has been the general contractor on the first two phases.

As of recent weeks, the hospital had not named the architect and contractor for the final phase, which is set to start in late 2012.

Wisconsin children’s hospital plans 10-year expansion

MADISON, Wis. – American Family Children’s Hospital in Madison recently announced expansion plans to meet what it calls rising demand for highly specialized pediatric care.

The projects planned for the children’s hospital are part of a 10-year strategic plan to complete the relatively new children’s hospital, which opened in 2007 on the campus of the University of Wisconsin (UW) Hospital.

The first phase of the expansion plan is expected to cost just more than $30 million, with the hospital financing $15.6 million and a fundraising campaign expected to raise and contribute about $16.4 million.

So far, the campaign has raised $6.5 million in private funding, meaning an additional $9.9 million is needed to complete the first phase, which is called “Sick Kids Can’t Wait.”

The plan calls for adding 26 critical care beds, imaging and heart services.

According to VP Jeff Poltawsky, the children’s hospital and its clinics have seen nearly 600,000 patients since its opening in 2007. Mr. Poltawsky reports that the 61-bed hospital is near capacity and demand continues to increase as the area’s population, and the reputation of the hospital, continues to grow.

During peak times, according to officials, some pediatric patients are admitted to a seven-bed overflow unit within the UW Hospital.

Of the 26 new critical care beds, 14 would be part of a high-acuity surgical NICU, with the 12 remaining beds being part of the pediatric intensive care patients (ICU).

“The hospital is seeing increasingly sicker patients with very complicated medical and surgical needs,” Mr. Poltawsky said in a statement.

“In fact, today, some babies from our region have to be transferred to metropolitan areas often significant distances from their homes to receive surgical neonatal intensive care.”

Construction of the first phase is scheduled to begin later this year with completion slated for 2014.

An expansion of the pediatric ED has been identified as a longer-term need in the plan to complete the vision of the children’s hospital.

Construction starts on Detroit’s future $78M heart hospital

DETROIT – The Detroit Medical Center (DMC) recently broke ground for the construction of its planned $78 million heart hospital, which will be the new home to DMC’s Cardiovascular Institute (CVI).

The future five-story heart center is being constructed on an 8-acre site near the intersection of Mack and Brush avenues in midtown Detroit, on the south end of DMC’s 60-acre main campus. The heart hospital will be adjacent to a new nine-level, $30 million parking garage with a capacity for 1,750 vehicles.

The building of the heart hospital is one of numerous capital projects planned or under way by the owner of the DMC, Nashville, Tenn.-based Vanguard Health System Inc. (NYSE: VHS).

As part of Vanguard’s 2010 acquisition of the eight-hospital system, the for-profit company agreed to invest $500 million in capital projects during its first five years of ownership.

According to health system officials, when the future DMC Heart Hospital opens in 2014 it will mark the beginning of “a new era” in cardiac care in Michigan.

CVI and its 45 heart care physicians will operate the DMC Heart Hospital and, once the new building opens, consolidate and expand its Cardio Team One program, which continues to work toward speeding up the average treatment times for heart attack patients.

In its four years in existence, Cardio Team One has reduced the “emergency-room-to-catheterization” time for heart-attack patients to 45 minutes, compared to the national average of 75 minutes.

“With the launch of this world-class facility, formulated for and dedicated exclusively to the care of heart patients, CVI is taking another major step toward becoming an internationally recognized center of excellence in cardiovascular medicine,” said Dr. Theodore L. Schreiber, the president of CVI, in a statement.

Dr. Schreiber has spent the past five years planning for and leading the effort to build the new hospital.

The future facility will provide heart surgery, vascular surgery and the treatment of a wide variety of cardiovascular ailments. Patients will not stay overnight in the facility. Instead, they will be admitted to the nearby DMC Harper University Hospital and returned to the heart hospital for any medical procedures.

Chicago-based Jones Lang LaSalle (NYSE: JLL) is the program manager for the project. According to Andrea Burg, project manager for JLL, the new facility is expected to help DMC recruit leading cardiologists from around the country.

She added in a statement: “While many Detroit residents in the past went to suburban locations for advanced medical treatment, we expect to see a reverse migration when the new hospital is complete.”

According to officials, the heart hospital will offer non-invasive cardiology procedures on the first floor; invasive cardiology procedures and catheterization labs on the second floor; same-day surgery and out-patient surgery on the third floor; and physician office, clinical space and administrative headquarters on the top two floors.

Detroit-based Harley Ellis Devereaux is the architect, and a partnership of Detroit-based Jenkins Construction Inc. and Parsippany, N.J.-based Skanska USA Building is the construction manager.

El Paso, Texas, gets new, $122.5 million children’s hospital

EL PASO, Texas – Until recently, El Paso was the largest city in the country without a separately licensed children’s hospital. That all changed in recent weeks with the opening of the $122.5 million, 130-bed El Paso Children’s Hospital, which occupies the top four floors of a new 10-story, $300 million building on the campus of University Medical Center (UMC), formerly Thomason Hospital.

As a result of the opening, children no longer have to “leave town for their care … (going) to San Antonio or Houston or Dallas,” Lawrence Duncan, the CEO of El Paso Children’s Hospital, said in a statement.

The 224,500 square foot new Children’s Hospital features has 60 private pediatric bedrooms, a 50-bed NICU, a 20-bed pediatric ICU, pediatric ORs, OR suites, procedure rooms, an ED and areas for oncology, pediatric radiology, pathology and pediatric rehabilitation.

Despite all the fanfare the children’s hospital has received, some news reports indicate that observers will be watching the hospital’s financial picture closely, as some have questioned whether it can remain financially viable. El Paso, which has about 650,000 residents, is one of the country’s poorest large cities. Of all the major cities in Texas, it has the highest percentage of residents lacking health insurance.

The project, however, moved forward after Kurt Salmon and Associates completed a feasibility study in 2007 indicating a children’s hospital could make it financially if it were affiliated with another, well-established acute care hospital such as University Medical Center. That same year, local voters approved a $120 million bond issue for the building of the children’s hospital.

Prior to the recent opening of the El Paso Children’s Hospital, pediatric acute care services were provided at UMC and at Tenet Healthcare Corp.’s (NYSE: THC) Regional Children’s Hospital at Providence, which is part of Providence Memorial Hospital.

Back in 2007, officials with Providence spoke out against the passage of the bond issue. However, these days, they support the new hospital, noting that El Paso’s children are under-served.

They also say that the Providence children’s hospital, which treats 90 percent of city’s pediatric oncology patients, has been in existence for 50 years and is not going anywhere.

The general contractor on the El Paso Children’s Hospital project was Birmingham, Ala.-based Robins & Morton, which has an office in Dallas; the architect was San Francisco-based KMD Architects.

More Inpatient Project News

• Construction is under way on a $50 million OR and bed tower expansion at Oak Hill Hospital in Brooksville, Fla., on the Gulf Coast side of the state, about 40 miles north of Tampa. Construction is expected to take about 22 months, with a completion slated for fall 2013. The project, which would add 70,000 square of new space and renovate 30,000 square feet, is reportedly the largest healthcare expansion in Hernando County history, according to hospital officials. Following the expansion, Oak Hill Hospital, which is part of Nashville, Tenn.-based HCA Inc. (NYSE: HCA), will have 262 acute care beds, with about half of them being in private rooms. The architect on the project is Nashville, Tenn.-based Gould Turner Group Inc.; the general contractor is the Nashville office of Brasfield & Gorrie LLC.
• Birmingham, Ala.-based HealthSouth Corp. (NYSE: HLS), plans to build a 40-bed rehabilitation hospital at the northwest corner of 91st and Pinchot avenues in Phoenix. The future 48,000 square foot inpatient rehab hospital is earmarked for a 6.9-acre site that the company recently acquired. The total investment in the project is projected to be about $20 million, including construction costs and the land acquisition. A groundbreaking is scheduled for the fourth quarter (Q4) of 2012, with completion expected by Q3 2013. The facility would be HealthSouth’s seventh hospital in Arizona and fourth in the Phoenix area. The architect on the project is Boulder, Colo.-based Boulder Associates Architects. In more news from HealthSouth, the company also has plans intends to build a 40-room rehabilitation hospital in Littleton, Colo. Construction is scheduled to begin in spring of this year, with an opening date expected in the third quarter of 2013.
• Choctaw County Medical Foundation and Magee, Miss.-based Pioneer Health Systems recently broke ground for a new hospital in Ackerman, Miss., in the eastern part of the state about 25 miles south of Starkville, for the future Pioneer Community Hospital of Choctaw. The site will also include a MOB. The new hospital will be a replacement for the Choctaw County Community Hospital, which was temporarily closed by the Mississippi Department of Health in December 2009 and then reopened in 2010. The new hospital will not only improve medical services offered in the area, according to officials, it will provide an economic boost as well. Pioneer Health reports that while it was expecting about 75 to 100 people to apply for the 25 initial job openings at the hospital, it received 750 applications. The hospital is now looking at employing about 125 people. After the hospital was closed in 2009, the county sought a new operator and issued a request for qualifications. It chose Pioneer Medical Services, which has been operating the facilities since 2010. The county sold $13.5 million in bonds to finance the new hospital.
• South Shore Hospital in Weymouth, Mass., recently secured bonding to help finance a $50 million, 66,000 expansion of the Emerson inpatient building on its campus. MassDevelopment, the state’s finance and development agency, issued a $20 million bond, which was purchased by Sovereign Bank of Boston. The expansion will result in two new floors with 60 beds atop the existing building. Hospital officials say the new space is needed to create patient care areas for medical, surgical, orthopedic, and cancer patients. “The funds from this bond, combined with the ongoing, generous philanthropic support we receive from our community, will assure that South Shore Hospital has the proper infrastructure to provide high-quality patient care for generations to come,” said Michael Cullen, chief financial officer of South Shore Hospital, in a statement. During the past decade, the 318-bed not-for-profit hospital has seen a 20 percent increase in ED patient visits and inpatient admissions, according to hospital officials.

• Riverside Shore Memorial Hospital in Accomac County, Va., has plans for a new replacement facility and MOB in the city of Onley, on the state’s Eastern Shore. The project recently took another step forward when the Accomack County Board of Supervisors voted 8-0 to approve rezoning 46 acres for the project. The replacement hospital would have 160,000 square feet and 78 beds, three ORs, an ED, a diagnostic center and outpatient facilities.