Healthcare

Mercy Health System will open the $465 million Mercy Hospital Joplin in March of 2015 in Joplin, Mo. Replacing St. John’s Mercy Regional Medical Center, which was demolished by a tornado, the new hospital was delivered in just 46 months by McCarthy Building Companies using Building Information Modeling (BIM). Completed under budget and in less than half the time of a conventionally built facility, the 890,000-sf Mercy Hospital Joplin comprises a nine-story inpatient tower and a five-story clinical tower.

Ground was broken in March of 2015 on the $47 million Shriners Hospital for Children Medical Center in Lexington. The five-story, 110,000-sf facility is sited on the campus of the University of Kentucky and UK HealthCare will lease the top two floors to provide clinical space for ophthalmology. Shriners’ pediatric orthopaedic services will be housed in 60,000 sf on the first three floors. The medical center will provide 20 patient exam rooms, a motion analysis lab, two surgical suites, and rehabilitation facilities.

The University of Illinois is planning to construct the Carle-Illinois College of Medicine in Urbana. Developed in partnership with Carle Health System, the project will be the nation’s first engineering-based medical school and will support a progressive pedagogy designed to foster innovation. This ground-breaking approach will integrate the University’s assets in engineering, technology, and supercomputing with Carle’s comprehensive health care resources. 

Great Ormond Street Hospital will begin construction in October of 2015 on a $100 million pediatric research facility in London. The seven-story, 140,000-sf Centre for Research into Rare Disease in Children will provide integrated clinical and research facilities to support the development of new therapies and medical devices. The project is designed by Stanton Williams Architects to optimize interaction and collaboration and is slated for occupancy in 2018.

The University of Kansas Hospital broke ground on the $280 million Cambridge North Patient Tower in March of 2015 in Kansas City. The seven-story, 300,000-sf facility will provide 92 beds, 12 operating rooms, an intensive care unit, and clinical space for neurology and surgical oncology. The project architect is Cannon Design and the general contractor is J.E. Dunn Construction. Occupancy is expected in 2017.

Felix Platter-Spital will begin construction in mid-2015 on a new $81 million teaching hospital in Basel, Switzerland. Located on a 194,000-sf site, the 240-bed, four-story facility will provide advanced geriatric medicine and rehabilitation services. Designed by Wörner Traxler Judge and Holzer Kobler, the project will include outpatient clinics, diagnostic suites, research space, and instructional areas. Occupancy is expected in July of 2018.

Inova Health is acquiring a 117-acre campus in Merrifield, Va., as the site for a new biomedical research complex called the Center for Personalized Health. The first phase of construction will create the Inova Translational Medicine Institute and the Inova Comprehensive Cancer and Research Institute. The $200 million, 180,000-sf project is slated for occupancy by early 2018. Existing facilities on the campus will be renovated to provide advanced laboratory space for collaborative genomics research.

Winthrop-University Hospital opened the $110 million Research and Academic Center in February of 2015 in Mineola, N.Y. Designed by Perkins Eastman, the five-story, 95,000-sf facility will support translational research on pediatric and adult diabetes in conjunction with patient care and community education. The center provides classrooms, a clinical trials center, a simulation training suite, a 350-seat auditorium, and core labs for the study of diabetes, obesity, cardiopulmonary disease, and neurology.

McGill University Health Centre opened its new $310 million Research Institute in Montreal in February of 2015. Designed to support the integration of research and clinical care, the facility houses the Centre for Translational Biology, the Centre for Outcomes Research and Evaluation, and the McConnell Centre for Innovative Medicine, which will accommodate clinical trials. The design and construction cost of the Research Institute was $210 million with $100 million for equipment and instrumentation.

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) is changing medical delivery and funding streams, with an impact on business models, institutional and facility planning, capital projects, asset utilization, and strategic positioning for healthcare facilities. Meeting the challenge of delivering high-quality, low-cost healthcare will require determining the fee-for-value proposition behind these changes—how the cost of changing healthcare services affects quality outcomes, and ways to measure these outcomes, says Anthony Roesch, director of healthcare consulting for HOK in New York. Healthcare organizations will increasingly look to mergers and acquisitions, as well as new partnerships, to limit costs and prolong the life of aging facilities, as the ACA forces them to shift from a fee-for-service financing model to a quality-of-care, outcomes-based model. Rather than all treatment being delivered at the hub, or hospital setting, the new model leverages services available in the community to cover an entire region or state. 

NYU Langone Medical Center will invest $180 million over the next four years to build a healthcare facility in the Cobble Hill neighborhood of Brooklyn in New York City. The 160,000-sf project will include a 24-hour freestanding emergency department, a cancer center, and clinical space for medical specialties and outpatient care. Completion is expected in 2018.
 

The University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) has crafted a decision-making framework based on objective standards to identify and pursue the highest priorities in a massive building boom that has roughly 95 projects valued from $10,000 to $450 million currently under construction. While a large part of that activity stems from the university’s long-range master plan, a significant portion was necessitated by the devastation of Hurricane Ike, which took 1.2 million sf of the medical school’s Galveston campus out of service in 2008. 

UF Health Shands Hospital broke ground on a $415 million expansion in January of 2015. The eight-story, 500,000-sf facility was designed by Flad Architects as two connecting towers providing 120 heart and vascular beds and 96 neuromedicine beds in private patient rooms. The project team includes Skanska USA and Affiliated Engineers, Inc. Completion is expected in 2018.

Penn Medicine is planning to build a 700-bed medical complex for the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania (HUP) in Philadelphia. Designed by Foster + Partners of London in association with HDR, the $1.5 billion project will include an inpatient tower, 50 operating rooms, clinical space, and an emergency department. The facility will be built by Balfour Beatty Construction and L.F. Driscoll at a cost of $1.2 billion.

Sanford Health is building the $500 million Fargo Medical Center in North Dakota. Designed by HKS Architects of Dallas, the 11-story, 384-bed hospital will provide cardiac care, women's health, pediatrics, orthopedics, and neurosurgery. The 1.2 million-sf facility will also include a 51-bay emergency department, 32 operating rooms, a trauma center, and adult and pediatric intensive care units. Mortenson Construction was awarded a $340 million contract to build the facility and work began on the project in summer of 2012.