Jackson Health To Build Emergency Medical Hub In Coral Gables

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Work will begin in six months on a new emergency medical facility in Coral Gables, Florida, that will serve Jackson Health System patients inside the city and within five miles of it.

Miami-Dade commissioners voted unanimously for the project at their final full meeting of 2020, advancing the latest expansion for the nonprofit public healthcare system that since 1918 has grown from community hospital with 13 beds to a network of thousands.

The single-story building, referred to in Miami-Dade documents as the Jackson Health Emergency Department at Galiano, will be built on two county-owned parcels on the corner of Oviedo Avenue and Southwest Eighth Street, also known as Galiano Street.

“The 10,170-square-foot facility will have dual functions,” a Dec. 15 memo from Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said.

The larger emergency department will have eight exam rooms and support space, two resuscitation rooms and computerized tomography and radiology equipment. The building will also serve as primary care space with six exam rooms.

There will be 36 parking spaces outside, including two that are compliant with Americans With Disabilities Act requirements. Some spaces will be convertible for electric vehicle charging in the future.

Materials attached to a prior memo by former county Mayor Carlos Giménez shows architectural and design firm Gresham Smith and engineering design firm Kimley-Horn as having worked on the project.

The project is now in the design and development phase, but Jackson has already approved the schematic design and layout of the facility. Miami-Dade expects construction documents to be final soon, with construction to begin in June and end in July 2022.

The roughly one-acre property, which Ms. Levine Cava’s memo said “was gifted” to Jackson by Commissioner Rebeca Sosa, the authorizing item’s sponsor. It is in an area zoned for limited commercial and single-family residential use.

“This…will be a miracle place in an area that we don’t have anything,” Ms. Sosa said.

“Most of the project’s funding will come from the Jackson Miracle Bond program, which includes work at all existing Jackson campuses and the creation of new facilities across Miami-Dade,” the memo said.

An additional $1 million will come from the county’s Building Better Communities general obligation bond program. Commissioners in October OK’d allocating to the project funds from the more than 16-year-old program, which includes an entry for “primary health care facilities” development.

A map depicting the five-mile radius of the property shows that the facility will serve communities in Coral Gables, Miami, Westchester, West Miami, Virginia Gardens, Miami Springs and Medley.

In the next five years, the population of those areas is expected to grow by 45,000 people, a 7.3% increase.

“The fastest-growing segment, will be residents aged 65 and older who will “demand increased medical services,” the memo said. “And the majority of patients treated [at and released from an emergency medical facility originate from ZIP Codes within a five-mile radius. Depending on the size of the ZIP Codes and the population density, a two- to five-mile area can represent between 50% and 70% of the patients treated.”

 

Source: Miami Today

New Hospital Coming To Venice, Florida In 2021

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Sarasota Memorial Hospital broke ground on its new hospital in April 2019, with its campus in Venice at Laurel and Pinebrook roads.

Its opening will be here in no time: SMH-Venice should be completed in fall 2021.

“It is going to bring services to that part of our community that is in great need,” SMH CEO David Verinder said. “We are looking forward to, quite frankly, many many years of that growing and continuing to serve in South County.”

The new hospital will offer a full array of medical and surgical care, including:

• Cardiology Unit/Catheterization Lab
•  Critical Care/Intensive Care Unit
• Emergency Care
• Endoscopy & other procedural areas
• Gastroenterology
• General/Vasular Surgery
• Labor & Delivery/Post-Partum Unit
• Laboratory/Diagnostic Testing
• Nephrology
• Neurology/Neurosurgery
• Oncology
• Orthopedics
• Pulmonology
• Imaging/Radiology
• Urology and more

The Venice hospital costs about $255 million to build. With furniture, equipment, the energy center and other campus infrastructure, the total cost will be about $437 million. The new hospital will be hurricane ready and has undergone some design changes in order to be better prepared for treating COVID patients, as well as other infectious diseases.

“The ICU is designed with negative pressure rooms so that we can better manage the pandemic if needed,” said Kim Savage, SMH’s public relations manager.

A negative pressure room, also called an isolation room, is meant for infection control. It allows air to flow into the isolation room but not escape from the infected patient’s room.

“Most hospitals had to quickly convert existing patient rooms into negative pressure environments or dedicate entire critical care units to safely isolate COVID-19 patients from other hospitalized patients,” SMH-Venice President Sharon Roush said. “Given the ongoing nature of this pandemic, we felt it important to be prepared for a resurgence of this or any other highly infectious airborne disease in the future.”

In addition to this, SMH added a negative-pressure ventilation system to convert all or a portion of their ICU/critical care units to a pandemic unit if needed. The new hospital will also greatly increase bed capacity.

“It will immediately add more than 100 beds, and we already are planning for expansion and that will allow it to double,” Savage said.

The initial development covers 48 acres on the eastern side of the parcel, but Savage says as the community grows, so will SMH-Venice. It has the capacity for 300 private patient suites, 16 surgical suites and a 50-bed ER. The expansion also will bring Sarasota Memorial’s extensive physician base further south and help build the medical staff for a future hospital in North Port.

The current plans for the Venice location includes:

• A 365,000-square-foot, 5-story hospital, with 110 private patient suites and 28-bed emergency center and 8 surgical suites
• A 2-story, 60,000-square-foot medical office building
•  Related support structures and service area
•  An adjacent 400-space parking garage and surface parking lots

“Construction on the new campus is full speed ahead,” Verinder says “COVID hasn’t slowed them down. We are very excited about the new Venice hospital coming online. It is going full speed right now. It’s beautiful even as it sitting in construction.”

He says they are in the process of hiring step and will be doing that throughout this coming year.

“We are excited to bring Sarasota Memorial’s high-quality care to the rapidly growing south Sarasota County community,” Roush said “Opening the new hospital in Venice will enhance care to the entire region, while also creating and sustaining jobs and livelihoods for hundreds of people and area businesses.”

Source: WTSP-TV News

The Pandemic’s Impact On Health Care Design: Smaller, Flexible Spaces With Great Adaptability

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The pandemic rocked U.S. health care facilities in 2020, leaving them with falling revenue from moneymaking surgeries and ordinary care as physicians and nurses shifted their attention toward patients infected with the coronavirus.

But the real change will come three to four years from now, when the impact of new designs implemented on existing and new healthcare facilities are deployed based on what architects and physicians have learned over the past nine months.

“Health care clients are already shifting their focus and asking for smaller footprints and more space flexibility along with additional isolated, negative air pressure rooms,” said Architect and EYP principal Miranda Morgan, while speaking at Bisnow‘s ‘The Future of DFW Healthcare’ webinar. “The smaller footprints are just more efficient and lean. We are still providing everything that is needed, and we are still doing big huge patient towers. But instead of big luxury, patient rooms, clients are asking us to be closer to code and to get what you need in that space and provide the patient with a good experience, but don’t go overboard.”

A large focus of future design will be on keeping healthy and sick patients separate rather than feeding everyone through the same access points and maneuvering the same hallways. Luxurious common areas have lost some favor as health care systems shift toward making sure more rooms are available to isolate emergency care and hospital inpatients while also better managing various points of access to segregate healthy and sick populations on-site.

“We are examining the way patients flow through the facilities,” said Dwain Thiele, UT Southwestern Medical Centersenior associate dean. “Some of the most challenging are imaging facilities or places that previously did not have a large amount of space, hallways or waiting rooms. It is something we will be looking at in the future.”

“What we have seen through the pandemic from a needs standpoint is more access points for people to be seen and to have access whether through telehealth or smaller, faster clinics where people can get in and out,” Transwestern National Managing Director of Healthcare John Huff said. “I guess we realize we don’t all want to sit in a huge long waiting room for an hour.”

In the future, waiting rooms very well could be a thing of the past, with that square footage allocated to more isolated treatment rooms, health care experts said.

“Other trends here to stay include the ongoing push for more outpatient care centers and ambulatory facilities that can take care of non-life-threatening illnesses while hospitals are hit with pandemics,” Huff said.

“Technology also will play a significant role in reshaping the future of health care, with telemedicine, or remote health care visits, allowing hospitals to keep healthier patients away from pandemic-stricken areas,” Methodist Health System Chief Operating Officer Pamela Stoyanoffsaid. “I would say prior to COVID, we probably saw about 1% of visits in the outpatient setting with telehealth. In April and May, when we saw the first surge, we were probably up to 80% to 90% of our visits. When some of the restrictions lifted, telehealth usage dropped back down to 15%, but it’s expected to have a place in the future of health care services. It is now a massive part of what we do, and it is here to stay.”

 

Source: Bisnow