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FOCUS | ANN ARBOR
Construction work is underway on Michigan Medicine’s new hospital in Ann Arbor after delays caused by the pandemic.
Michigan Medicine’s new hospital tower muscles on After nearly yearlong delay due to COVID-19, project scheduled for fall 2024 opening BY DUSTIN WALSH
Michigan Medicine’s new $920 million hospital tower resumed construction in the spring after a nearly yearlong delay due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The project is now slated for a fall 2025 open date, pushed back from its original fall 2024 opening. Despite the delays — construction broke ground in October 2019 — the university health system’s leaders are optimistic the project will transform health care across the state and raise the system’s already strong national profile. Michigan Medicine is ranked the 11th best health system in the country by U.S. News & World Report. The hospital will include state-ofthe-art equipment and design, increasing access for patients in need of complex and high acuity care, Michigan Medicine said. The facility will include 264 private rooms along with two floors of operating and procedure rooms. The new clinical inpatient tower, which will span 690,000 square feet, will be at Ann Street and Zina Pitcher Place, west of UM’s 550-bed University Hospital, an 11-story facility that opened in 1986, and the Frankel Cardiovascular Center. The crux of the new design is the ability to transform rooms into an intensive care unit, giving the system
Construction work at Michigan Medicine’s new hospital in Ann Arbor last month. | NIC ANTAYA FOR CRAIN’S DETROIT BUSINESS
flexibility to handle the needs of patients in the event of a catastrophe like the current pandemic, said Hitinder Gurm, associate chief clinical officer for the system’s adult hospitals and an interventional cardiologist. “Had we had this building a year ago, we could have treated a lot more COVID patients,” Gurm said. “We don’t know what will happen 10 years from now, 15 years from now. Medicine is always advancing, so maybe patients that currently spend two or
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three days in the ICU might spend much less, so we want to be ready to shift those beds to the patient care we need at any specific time.” Of the 264 beds at the hospital, 240 will be able to become ICU beds if there is need. Of those beds, 96 can be transformed into negative pressure rooms, which extracts the air potentially contaminated with a virus from the hospital. Currently, Michigan Medicine has 32 negative pressure rooms.
After con“WE NEED MORE SPACE AS struction of the new rooms and HEALTH CARE NEEDS CHANGE relocation of the AND WE CONTINUE TO SEE existing beds, the project will MORE ACUTE PATIENTS.” add a total of — Dr. Marschall Runge, CEO, 154 new beds to Michigan Medicine the medical campus. Michigan Medicine isn’t just in- than in the 1980s and 1990s. It’s great vesting in the new 12-story tower for that we have these capabilities but capabilities but for capacity. The cur- we’re struggling for space.” rent hospital is usually full at upward The project, of course, isn’t only goof 85 percent capacity, Dr. Marschall ing to improve the health system but Runge, CEO of the system, said. is likely to have a spillover effect on “It’s tough to manage our system at the Ann Arbor community. that capacity,” Runge said. “We need For instance, in the last 10 years the more space as health care needs university has spun out 110 new startchange and we continue to see more ups, a number of them in the health acute patients.” care field. Michigan Medicine also Michigan Medicine had nearly 2.7 employs nearly 30,000. million patient visits across its system “Modern health care is the largest in 2020 and 95,000 emergency room employer in many states, and we emvisits. ploy a lot in the area,” Gurm said. Gurm said the lack of capacity is We’re also a hub for education and due to the hospital’s patient popula- research and a large number of tion getting older and requiring more spinoffs happen. When we have a complex health care. center that is providing even more “We’re treating older and older pa- complex care, creating that intersectients as people are living longer,” tion of research and patient experiGurm said. “Older people lead more ence, there will be an impact that goes active lives because of the success of beyond those walls. It’s good for us our treatments to people in their 50s, and good for Ann Arbor.” 60s and 70s. So now we’re doing more complex procedures and surgeries Contact: dwalsh@crain.com; that provide a better quality of life (313) 446-6042; @dustinpwalsh
